Day after meeting Pelosi in India, Dalai Lama set to fly to US

The US Congress passed this month a legislation, the Resolve Tibet Act, calling for a peaceful resolution of the dispute over the status and governance of Tibet. It also calls on Beijing to resume dialogue with the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama. read more

The Dalai Lama with former US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other members of the US Congressional delegation at his residence, in Dharamshala. (PTI)

A day after a bipartisan United States congressional delegation met with the Dalai Lama at his residence in Dharamshala, the Tibetan spiritual leader is set to travel to the US on Thursday for medical treatment for his knees. It remains unclear if he will meet any US officials during his stay in the country. The visit poses questions about why former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other lawmakers travelled to India to meet with the Dalai Lama, just a day before his scheduled visit to the US.

Pelosi after meeting the Tibetan spiritual leader on Wednesday said that the legacy of the Dalai Lama “will live forever” and nobody will give Chinese President Xi Jinping any credit.

The delegation is led by US House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul and has members including Pelosi, who is now Speaker Emerita, and prominent US Congressional members — Mariannette Miller, Gregory Meeks, Nicole Malliotakis, Jim McGovern, and Ami Bera.

The US Congress passed this month a legislation, the Resolve Tibet Act, calling for a peaceful resolution of the dispute over the status and governance of Tibet. It also calls on Beijing to resume dialogue with the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.

The Resolve Tibet Act is a bipartisan bill to enhance US support for Tibet and promote dialogue between the People’s Republic of China and the Dalai Lama toward a peaceful resolution of the long-standing dispute between Tibet and China.

US President Joe Biden is going to take a decision that he thinks is in the best interest of the United States, the White House has said, after China warned of “resolute measures” if the Tibet policy bill is signed into law.

The Act enhances US support for Tibet empowering State Department officials to actively and directly counter disinformation about Tibet from the Chinese government, reject false claims that Tibet has been part of China since “ancient times”, push for negotiations without preconditions between the Chinese government and the Dalai Lama or his representatives or the democratically elected leaders of the Tibetan community, and affirm the State Department’s responsibility to coordinate with other governments in multilateral efforts toward the goal of a negotiated agreement on Tibet. China officially refers to Tibet as Xizang.

China in April this year said it would talk only with the representatives of the Dalai Lama and not the officials of the Tibetan government in exile based in India.

At the same time, China ruled out dialogue on the Dalai Lama’s long-pending demand for autonomy for his remote Himalayan homeland.

In its talks with China between 2002 and 2010, the Tibetan side pitched genuine autonomy for the Tibetan people in line with the middle-way policy as proposed by the Dalai Lama.

The Tibetan spiritual leader has said he did not seek political independence for Tibet but seeks autonomy for all Tibetan areas which include Gansu, Qinghai, Sichuan and Yunnan provinces besides the current official Tibet Autonomous Region, a truncated version of Tibet before it was annexed by China.

After a failed anti-Chinese uprising in 1959, the 14th Dalai Lama fled Tibet and came to India where he set up the government-in-exile. Relations between the two sides strained further due to protests against China in Tibetan areas in 2008.