By Phurbu Thinley
Dharamsala, May 28: Speaker of the U.S. House of representative Nancy Pelosi and a bipartisan CODEL on Wednesday met with China’s three top leaders- President Hu Jintao, Premier Wen Jiabao, and Wu Bangguo, the Chairman of the National People’s Congress, and talked about North Korea and human rights abuses in Tibet.
Speaker Pelosi and five House legislators involved in energy and environmental issues met with the Chinese leaders separately on the third day of an eight-day tour of China.
The meetings had addressed North Korea’s recent nuclear test and missile launchings, human rights issues, intellectual property rights and the global financial crisis, according to a press statement issued late Wednesday by the office of the Speaker of the House.
“We urged the Chinese leaders to use their influence to help bring North Korea to the table for Six-Party Talks. On clean energy and climate change, both sides agreed to work together to confront the urgent challenge we face. Our delegation also emphasized the bipartisan concern in Congress on China’s poor record on human rights in China and Tibet,” Pelosi said in the statement.
“Republicans and Democrats are united in our concern about human rights abuses in China and Tibet,” the statement added Congressman James Sensenbrenner, Republican of Wisconsin, as saying.
Sensenbrenner was also in the Pelosi-led 10-member congressional delegation that visited Dharamsala, the seat of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile in northern India, in March last year amidst growing anti-China unrest in Tibet.
Speaking in Dharamsala, Pelosi said the delegation joined the Tibetans at “a sad time” in order to shed “the bright light of truth” on the situation in their homeland.
Describing the Dalai Lama as “the embodiment of non violence”, Pelosi called for “an independent, outside investigation” after China accused the Dalai Lama of masterminding the Tibet unrest. She challenged the world to “speak out against Chinese oppression.”
“If freedom-loving people throughout the world do not speak out against Chinese oppression in China and Tibet, we have lost all moral authority to speak on behalf of human rights anywhere in the world,” she said in her address to a gathering in Dharamsala last year.
On April 3, 2008, Pelosi introduced House Resolution 1077, which calls on “China to cease the crackdown, release protestors, provide unfettered access to journalists and independent international monitors to Tibet, and engage in a results-based dialogue with the Dalai Lama.”
The delegation arrived in China on Sunday and will reportedly stay in China until May 31.
Pelosi, a longtime supporter of Tibet’s cause and a staunch critic of China’s human rights record, has been seen downplaying both Tibet and human rights issues during the ongoing China visit by some observers.
However, in Beijing, her visit was greeted by pro-democracy protesters bearing a banner that said: “Welcome Pelosi. Pay close attention to human rights. SOS.”
