German foreign minister says China still upset over Dalai Lama visit

The Associated Press Published: September 28, 2007

UNITED NATIONS: Germany's foreign minister on Friday said China remains upset over a meeting between the German chancellor and the Dalai Lama last week.

Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said his talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi touched on Iran and Myanmar but Sunday's meeting between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the exiled Tibetan leader in Berlin emerged as the main issue.

"The Chinese side used the meeting to express again their anger over the meeting with the Dalai Lama," Steinmeier told reporters following the meeting.

"China pointed out that it has supported the German unity for a very long time, and that it doesn't have understanding for support for as they say a 'separatist movement' in China," he said.

Shortly before the meeting was held, China's U.N. Ambassador Wang Guangya said he would not comment on the matter.

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Region's energy needs enable Myanmar juntaCitigroup and UBS project poor earningsBlackwater security firm assailed for Iraq killingsChina routinely criticizes visits abroad by the Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet for India in 1959 during a failed uprising against Chinese rule. Winner of the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize, he remains popular among Tibetans and widely respected abroad, despite efforts to undermine him by Chinese authorities.

Merkel's spokesman, Ulrich Wilhelm, said in a statement following the meeting that the Dalai Lama "stressed the peaceful, violence-free nature of his work, which rules out striving for Tibet's independence" from China. He noted that, ahead of the visit, Germany underlined that it remained committed to "its one-China policy."

But on Tuesday, Beijing blasted the meeting that marked the 72-year-old Buddhist leader's first reception by a German head of government.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said the meeting "not only grossly interfered with the internal affairs of China, it seriously hurt the feelings of the Chinese people and undermined China-Germany relations."

Steinmeier on Friday said he reiterated to the Chinese that Germany's one-China policy was not affected by the meeting with the Dalai Lama. "But I think that the interest in good relationships between Germany and China should also be on the Chinese side," he said.

The talks also included the situation in Myanmar, where the military government has been conducting increasingly violent crackdowns on demonstrators.

Steinmeier said that the Chinese described their own efforts to try and stabilize the situation with their neighbors and gave assurance that China "has an interest to construct the future direction of Myanmar in a peaceful way."

The Chinese also expressed support for the mission of the U.N. special envoy to Myanmar, Ibrahim Gambari, who is headed to the country to promote a political solution, he said.

On Iran, Steinmeier said that a joint statement from the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany with E.U. support, "gives very realistic conditions for Iran to find a way back to political talks."

The six key nations and the European Union agreed Friday to delay until November a new U.N. resolution that would toughen sanctions against Iran, waiting to see if Tehran answers questions about its disputed nuclear program.

Their joint statement said they would finalize the new resolution and bring it to a vote unless reports in November from the chief U.N. nuclear official and the European Union's foreign policy chief show a positive outcome.

The United States, Britain and France had been pushing for new sanctions now to pressure Iran to suspend uranium enrichment, but Russia and China wanted to give Tehran more time to comply with U.N. inspectors.

"The issue is now that Iran has to answer the still pending questions with the IAEA, and the one and only sense for this is to prove that the Iranian atomic program doesn't intend to produce nuclear weapons," Steinmeier said.