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| World Home » Current Affairs » | Wed. Oct 8, 2008 |
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US and Europe sharpen their tone over Tibet MIL/NYT, Mar 27, 2008. IR Summary/Steven Lee Myers & Katrin Bennhold Washington: March 27, 2008 – IR Summary - European leaders have sharpened their tone over Tibet here today; as President Bush gave a ring to President Hu Jintao of China and urged to talk to Dalai Lama to restore peace over the Tibet issue. China looks to have take Bush’s reaction serious and practical. In a statement, the White House said that Mr. Bush, in his telephone conversation with Mr. Hu, had urged that diplomats and journalists be allowed access to the region. The statement noted that the two leaders discussed Tibet as part of a conversation that also included Taiwan’s recent elections, negotiations with North Korea about its nuclear programs and the situation in Myanmar. Mr. Bush’s national security adviser,Stephen J.Hadley, , later said that the president had “pushed very hard” on the issue of Tibet, urging restraint and a renewed effort to address the grievances of Tibetans. Neither the statement nor Mr. Hadley explicitly criticized China’s government. “There’s an opportunity here,” Mr. Hadley said, referring to the possibility of renewed talks with the Dalai Lama’s representatives, “and China needs to seize it.” Mr. Bush has already ruled out a boycott of the Olympics, which some have called for, indicating that he hoped to maintain a constructive relationship with the Chinese leadership. China is also feeling the heat of the world community even though Chinese diplomats are trying to defend the crackdown on protesters in Tibet. But the fact remains that an intensification of international concern over the violent repression in the region is deeply felt. In London, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France told a joint session of the House of Commons and the House of Lords during a state visit that Britain and France shared a responsibility to urge the Chinese leadership to respect human rights and cultural identity as per New York Times. That goal could only be achieved if there was “true dialogue” between China and the Dalai Lama, he said, a day after hinting that France might boycott the opening ceremonies of the Olympics in Beijing this summer. French diplomats said they were in talks with other European capitals about dispatching a European Union delegation to China. France, which will take over the European Union’s presidency in July, will seek agreement on the issue during an informal foreign ministers’ meeting at the end of this week, said an official with knowledge of the draft proposal who would only speak on the condition of anonymity before the meeting. China reacted swiftly to the international criticism, comparing its handling of Tibetan protesters to a recent French police raid after rioting in the volatile Paris suburb of Villiers-le-Bel. When asked whether China would accept an international fact-finding mission, China’s deputy ambassador in Paris, Qu Xing, told the French radio station Europe 1, “Would you allow a United Nations mission to see what happened in Villiers-le-Bel?” The prospect of the Olympics being held against a backdrop of Chinese military action in Tibet has forced European leaders to walk a narrow line between maintaining their increasingly important economic and political ties to China while protests among their own people against China’s actions in Tibet intensify and calls from leading figures in Europe’s former communist east grow louder.
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