By MICHAEL VALPY AND JEFF SALLOT
TORONTO and OTTAWA – After weeks of dithering, Prime Minister Paul Martin’s office announced yesterday that he will meet the Dalai Lama in Ottawa next week, blindsiding and upsetting both the Chinese embassy and the organizers of the exiled Tibetan leader’s visit.
An embassy official was incredulous when told about the decision, made public late in the day on Easter Monday, a federal government holiday.
“We hadn’t heard, we’d had no word,” the official said. “We have no way of responding until tomorrow.”
The Chinese government strenuously objects to foreign government leaders meeting with the Dalai Lama, whom it labels a separatist.
An official in the Prime Minister’s Office acknowledged that the Chinese had been exerting intense pressure on the Martin government not to hold a meeting.
Thubten Samdup, president of the Montreal-based Canada Tibet Committee, which has been pressing for the meeting for months, said: “We are pleased that the Prime Minister has agreed to the meeting. But the optics . . . the logistics we have to work out. I’m more interested at this point in the how and the when.”
Mr. Samdup said Mr. Martin wrote to him on March 11, saying he would get back to him with a decision about the meeting. In the meantime, the Dalai Lama’s itinerary for his April 21-24 visit to Ottawa kept getting more and more full.
“This comes as kind of a surprise,” Mr. Samdup said. “In fact I was going to call the Prime Minister’s Office tomorrow and ask what was happening.”
A formal announcement about the meeting will be made in a day or two, a PMO official said last night.
Mr. Martin will be the first Canadian prime minister to come face to face with the 68-year-old Buddhist holy man, who was both spiritual and temporal leader of Tibet until Chinese troops seized control of the country in 1959.
The Dalai Lama has since lived in neighbouring India, from where he has campaigned relentlessly, but peacefully, for the return of Tibetan autonomy and the preservation of Tibetan culture. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989.
The Canada Tibet Committee wants Mr. Martin to broker negotiations between the Chinese and the Dalai Lama, leading to at least a measure of Tibetan autonomy. The Canadian government has made it clear that will never happen, and the Chinese have made it just as clear that it would be an intolerable interference in China’s domestic affairs.
Mario Lague, the Prime Minister’s director of communications, told The Canadian Press: “He’ll be meeting [with the Dalai Lama] in his capacity as a spiritual leader so we’re trying to arrange something that will fit within that frame.” Mr. Samdup said he had no idea what that “frame” could be.
Ottawa officials said they expect a protest from China about the meeting, but do not anticipate political or economic retaliation, particularly since U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair (as reluctantly as Mr. Martin) have also met with the Tibetan exile.
Because of Chinese pressure in the past — and Canada’s legal acknowledgment of Chinese sovereignty over Tibet — Canadian prime ministers have sidestepped meeting him for more than a decade.
Brian Mulroney was the first prime minister to get an invitation when the Dalai Lama visited Canada in 1990. Mr. Mulroney said no.
He was invited again to meet with the Dalai Lama in 1993, but instead sent his foreign minister, Barbara McDougall, to see him in Montreal. On the same visit, the Dalai Lama saw former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, whom he admired, and met with Jean Chrétien, who was then leader of the opposition.
As prime minister, Mr. Chrétien was asked to meet the Dalai Lama in Ottawa in 2002, but he never gave an answer. The visit was cancelled because of the Tibetan leader’s health. A new invitation was extended to Mr. Chrétien in advance of this visit and, again, he didn’t reply. The invitation was passed to Mr. Martin.
