12 April 2008
Merkel adamant she would meet Dalai Lama again
(FASZ, Spiegel) In an interview in the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has made it clear that she would meet with the Dalai Lama again. She did not say when she would meet with him, but defended her reception of him in September 2007 at her office in Berlin. Her aides have said in the past that she would not be in Berlin for any meeting with the Dalai Lama when he visits Germany next month. The news magazine Der Spiegel said tension was growing over plans for him to meet the speaker of the lower house of the German parliament, Norbert Lammert, a Christian Democrat like Merkel. Der Spiegel said Beijing had applied pressure on Lammert to cancel the meeting, bringing a hardening of German-Chinese relations.