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FRANKFURT: The Dalai Lama lashed out on Thursday at the recent "suppression" of anti-Chinese unrest in Tibet, as he arrived in Germany at the start of a tour of Western powers in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics.
"The Chinese political authorities' reaction, as before, was suppression. So it is very sad," the Tibetan spiritual leader said after landing in Frankfurt.
He called for autonomy for the Himalayan region and stressed that Tibetans wanted to live in harmony with China.
"Genuine harmony must come on the basis of trust, trust very much based on equality.
"So far these are lacking. We need genuine autonomy."
Better relations with Tibet, he added, was "in the own interest of the people of this huge country".
The 1989 Nobel peace laureate's salvo against Beijing kicked off a tour that will also take him to the United States, Australia, Britain and France and only conclude days before the end of the Olympics on August 20.
It is expected to keep the plight of Tibet high on the international agenda in the wake of the deadly violence that shook the capital Lhasa in March.
China's reaction to the unrest drew international condemnation and heaped pressure on Beijing over its human rights record ahead of the Games.
The Dalai Lama told reporters in Frankfurt the main aim of his trip was to "promote human values, secular ethics, and to promote harmony".
The Tibetan exiled leaders based in Dharamshala in India, where the Dalai Lama fled to in 1959, said 203 Tibetans were killed and 1,000 injured in Beijing's crackdown.
Beijing said Tibetan "rioters" and "insurgents" killed 21 people and accuses the Dalai Lama of being behind the violence and of fomenting trouble ahead of the Olympics – an allegation rejected by the Buddhist cleric.
This month representatives of the Dalai Lama held talks with China to try to defuse tensions.
His schedule in Germany has raised eyebrows as he will be meeting neither Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is in Latin America, nor Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
Last September, a historic meeting between Merkel and the Buddhist leader at the chancellery caused a deep chill in relations between Berlin and Beijing.
A government spokesman denied that his schedule this time meant that Berlin was giving in to diplomatic pressure from China, which resurged on Wednesday as the Chinese embassy demanded a meeting between the Dalai Lama and MPs be scrapped.
The Dalai Lama's representative in Europe, Tseten Chhoekyapa, branded Steinmeier's decision not to meet the Dalai Lama "an unhappy one", but his spokesman Tenzin Takla later downplayed the statement.
"His Holiness does not wish to create any inconvenience for anyone or any country," Takla said in Dharamshala.
In place of Merkel or Steinmeier, Berlin has designated Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul to meet the Dalai Lama on behalf of the government on Monday.
He was also due to hold talks with the speaker of parliament Norbert Lammert and the state premiers of Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia and to address the foreign affairs committee of parliament.
The chairman of the committee, Ruprecht Polenz, told the regional daily Muenstersche Zeitung on Thursday that the Chinese embassy in Berlin had urged it to cancel the meeting, but that the committee had declined.
The second leg of the five-nation swing will take the 72-year-old to Britain for nine days, where he will hold talks with Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
Brown drew fire on Wednesday after it emerged that he will not meet the Tibetan spiritual leader in his Downing Street office, as his predecessors Tony Blair and John Major had done.
The head of an all-party committee said the decision to meet at Lambeth Palace, the Archbishop of Canterbury's residence, appeared to be designed to allay Chinese anger at the talks by presenting them as not entirely formal.
"It is deeply disappointing to us that the prime minister appears to be willing to kowtow to the Chinese leadership," Norman Baker said.
But Brown said the location of the talks was not as important as the substance.
"What matters is not what part of (London) we meet but what issues we discuss about Tibet," he said in parliament.
- AFP/so
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