Obama to meet with Dalai Lama next week

President Barack Obama will meet with the Dalai Lama on Thursday, Feb. 18 in the White House, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs announced during today's press briefing.

It will be the first time the president will meet with the Tibetan spiritual leader, who visited Washington late last year. However, Obama did not meet with the Dalai Lama at that time, citing scheduling concerns -- though many skeptics believed it was an attempt to shore up support with China, which would have opposed the meeting.

Consequently, the president's new sit-down with the Tibetan leader is nonetheless likely to chill already frozen Sino-American relations.

The two nations have been at loggerheads for months now, beginning with a suspected Chinese attack on Google and peaking when the United States promised to sell weaponry in Taiwan.

Chinese leaders have thus stressed to the White House that any meeting with the Dalai Lama would only "threaten trust and co-operation between China and the United States." But the White House has since dismissed that rhetoric, stressing its coming meeting with the Dalai Lama was no political affront.

"The president told China's leaders during his trip last year that he would meet with the Dalai Lama and he intends to do so," White House spokesman Bill Burton previously told reporters.

"The Dalai Lama is an internationally respected religious and cultural leader and the president will meet with him in that capacity," he said.

Gibbs repeated that on Thursday, adding it was not totally unexpected that the United States and China would disagree on key issues.

"We know the two countries on this planet are not always going to agree on everything, and we'll have those disagreements," Gibbs noted, later adding the United States and China have worked together on a number of issues, including its currency and human rights record.

---