Aus PM denies report of deliberately avoiding Dalai Lama

Rudd is on a state visit to Japan and Indonesia and is scheduled to return to Australia late Saturday.

Rudd told reporters in Tokyo on Wednesday that nothing should be read into his absence while the Dalai Lama was in Australia.

“I’ve met the Dalai many times before. There’s nothing remarkable in this,” he said.

Immigration Minister Chris Evans – acting prime minister on Friday and Saturday when both Rudd and his deputy will be overseas – said he would meet the Dalai Lama in Sydney on Friday.

Australia Tibet Council executive officer Paul Bourke said Rudd, as a vocal advocate of Tibetan human rights, should have arranged a meeting in Australia with the exiled Tibetan leader.

“The prime minister was quite outspoken during the recent uprisings in Tibet, even raising the issue strongly while he was in Beijing,” Bourke said Wednesday. “It would have been appropriate for him to take the opportunity to meet the Dalai Lama here.” The Dalai Lama did not speak to the media Wednesday.

Outside the sports arena where his lecture series was being held, hundreds of supporters gathered. So did about 50 members of the Buddhist subgroup the Western Shugden Society, who waved placards and shouted slogans protesting what they said was repression by the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama has strongly discouraged people from following the group’s version of Buddhism, called Dorje Shugden.

China, which has controlled Tibet since the 1950s, accuses the Dalai Lama of being a political activist campaigning for Tibetan independence and discourages world leaders from meeting him.

Rudd, a Chinese-speaking former diplomat to Beijing, met the Dalai Lama in Australia a year ago as opposition leader, but they have not met since Rudd was elected prime minister last November.

Rudd provoked an official protest earlier this year by calling on Beijing to open a dialogue with the Dalai Lama in the interests of finding a peaceful resolution to recent unrest in Tibetan areas of western China.

Peter Drysdale, an expert on Australia’s relations with Asia, said Rudd had played a positive part in encouraging dialogue between Beijing and the Dalai Lama’s supporters. Nevertheless, he suspected the prime minister was reluctant to jeopardize that progress by provoking Beijing with a rescheduled itinerary that allowed him to meet the Dalai Lama.

“He’s mindful of both not aggravating China but also of not disturbing what he’s put in place for opening up dialogue between Tibet and the Chinese authorities,” said Drysdale, of the Australian National University.