Prince Charles to meet with Dalai Lama during London visit
LONDON (AFP) — Prince Charles will meet with the Dalai Lama, who is expected in London in May, a spokesman for the royal told AFP Thursday.
Confirmation of the meeting between Charles and the Tibetan spiritual leader comes just a day after Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he would meet with the Dalai Lama in May, a move swiftly welcomed by pro-Tibet activists but sternly challenged by Beijing.
Asked whether the prince would meet with the Dalai Lama, a spokesman for the royal said: "Yes, that is accurate."
The spokesman declined to comment further, however.
In January, Charles told a group that campaigns against human rights abuses in Tibet that he would not be attending the Beijing Olympics in August.
The prince is a well-known supporter of the Tibetan cause, and hosted a reception at St. James's Palace in May 2004 for the spiritual leader, whom Beijing regards as a separatist.
He has also not spoken kindly of China's leaders in the past -- in a diary entry made public in 2006, Charles wrote on the occasion of Hong Kong's handover to China in 1997 that China's leaders resembled a "group of appalling old waxworks".