October 18, 2007	Thursday	Shawwal 5, 1428

BEIJING: China unleashed a fresh verbal tirade at the United States on Wednesday over the Dalai Lama’s warm reception in Washington, but analysts said threats of seriously damaged ties were overstated.

After US President George Bush defied warnings from Beijing and met the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader privately on Tuesday, China hit out at what it termed a “gross interference” in its internal affairs.

“China is strongly resentful of this and resolutely opposes it, and has made solemn representations to the US side,” foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said, according to the official Xinhua news agency.

Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said on Tuesday that the Dalai Lama’s meeting with Bush and the Congressional Gold Medal ceremony represented “a severe violation of the norms of international relations.” Spokesman Liu warned on Tuesday that Sino-US ties would be seriously damaged by the celebration of the Dalai Lama — whom China accuses of wanting independence for his homeland — and the state-run press on Wednesday kept up the pressure.

“This event will certainly cast a shadow over the (China-US) relations. The US side must be held responsible for the consequences,” the state-run China Daily newspaper said in an editorial.

US officials said China had already showed its anger at the encounter with Bush by postponing a planned meeting of world powers on Wednesday in Berlin aimed at discussing the Iran nuclear crisis.

China has also directed similar fury at Germany, Australia and other Western countries in recent months after their leaders met the Dalai Lama.

But Tao Changsong, a researcher at China’s Tibetan Association of Social Science in the Himalayan region’s capital, Lhasa, said the Dalai Lama’s trip to Washington was unlikely to have a major long-term impact on Sino-US ties.

“These kind of events happen all the time due to the different interests of different nations, only this time it involves the president (Bush) so China has to express itself more angrily,” Tao said.

“However, Sino-US relations in principle won’t be affected very much because China needs a stable environment for its development, which is what can change the lives of Chinese people including in Tibet.” Asked whether China would allow the issue to impact trade, Tao said:

“International trade has its own rules. China will abide by trading rules when dealing with its trade partners.” Daniel Sneider, an Asia Pacific specialist at Stanford University in the United States, described China’s reaction as a routine affair, rather than an indicator of permanent damage between the two nations.

“It seems more likely to me that (China is) going through the motions of protest more for their own domestic audience than for any outside audience,”Sneider said.—AFP