U.S. faces another challenge as Dalai Lama begins visit

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

WASHINGTON, MAY 7. At a time when there is the free fall in Washington's relations with Beijing, the Republican Administration is facing yet another challenge in the three-week visit of the Dalai Lama. Starting Monday and through May 28, the Tibetian religious leader will be visiting six cities.

The Dalai Lama will be travelling to Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, Portland, San Jose, Madison, Los Angeles and the District of Colombia. On May 24, he will be deliver the commencement address to graduates of the School of Advanced International Studies of the Johns Hopkins University in the District of Colombia.

The Dalai Lama travels to the United States regularly and as has always been the case, the interest is on his scheduling agenda in Washington which invariably has the White House component. Official level meetings have been arranged for the Dalai Lama and he has a constituency on Capitol Hill that includes the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. Jesse Helms.

In the present instance there are reports that the Dalai Lama will meet the Vice-President, Mr. Richard Cheney. In the last two Clinton administrations anytime the Dalai Lama has had a meeting with the Vice-President, the President has ``dropped'' by. And the expectation is that the present Republican President will be doing the same. It will be Mr. George Bush's first encounter with the Dalai Lama.

Dropping into the meeting between the Dalai Lama and Mr. Cheney is by itself not as critical as what Mr. Bush is going to say to the religious leader and in general remarks later. Tibet is one of the main topics of interest to the Republican conservatives - with valuable inputs from their Democratic colleagues - who constantly use this issue to hammer China on human rights.

If anything the tone and tenor of the Conservative Right will be more strident given what has been taking place in the U.S.-China relations over the last six weeks. And the right wing has been seething in anger that the United States was voted out of the Human Rights Commission with the firm conviction that China was one of those nations actively involved in the campaign to oust the United States.

The Dalai Lama's visit to the United States is taking place at a critical juncture in bilateral relations and the onus is on Washington to ensure that the present downtrend is not further aggravated by any remarks of the Bush Administration on Tibet. The Dalai Lama will be utilising the visit to promote his campaign ``on a process of peaceful negotiations with the Chinese leadership as a means to resolve the problem of Tibet'', says an agency report quoting officials of the Tibet Office in New York.

The Bush Administration's China policy has been meriting a lot of critical attention in the media and elsewhere with many scholars and experts questioning the utility of a hardline approach from a longer term national interests perspective. The Republican Administration came into office making no bones of the fact that it regarded China not as a strategic partner but as a strategic competitor.

Starting with the April 1 collision over the South China Seas involving a Chinese fighter plane and an American surveillance aircraft, the rhetoric on both sides has been sharp. The Administration's unrelenting stance on the National Defence Missile system aside, Washington took a high profile anti-China attitude at the Human Rights Commission in Geneva; and the Bush Administration went through with an arms package for Taiwan even if it did not have the Aegis component. And the President had some plain words on Taiwan and American policy.

The EP-3E Aries II surveillance plane is still in Hainan Island with the U.S. and China taking up the issue of its return at a meeting of the bilateral Maritime Commission, the date for which has not been announced. The technical experts of Lockheed Martin who examined the EP-3E have briefed military officials. The word is that the technicians believe that the plane can be repaired and flown out of Hainan Island. But apparently the Chinese are against this.

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