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PARIS: The Dalai Lama was to hold closed-door talks with French lawmakers on Wednesday, the only political meeting in a 12-day trip to France at the height of the Beijing Olympics.
The 73-year-old Tibetan spiritual leader was to meet 30 to 40 lawmakers at the French Senate at 10:00 am (0800 GMT).
The Dalai Lama, who flew into Paris for 12 days on Monday, shelved tentative plans to meet President Nicolas Sarkozy while in France for fear of angering China.
No government-level meetings are planned during his stay, although first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy will attend the inauguration of a temple in Lodeve in southern France Friday next week.
Asked Tuesday to comment on the decision not to meet the French leader, he replied: "It doesn't matter", saying his visit was "spiritual", not political.
The Nobel peace laureate, who Beijing has accused of fomenting unrest in Tibet to sabotage the Olympics, reaffirmed his support for the event as he visited a vast new Buddhist temple near Paris.
The rest of his stay, which runs to August 23, will be devoted to religious visits in northwestern Normandy and Brittany and a six-day teaching cycle in the western city of Nantes.
Planned more than two years ago, the Dalai Lama's French visit suddenly turned political after a Chinese crackdown on unrest in Tibet in March that sparked international outrage.
Plans for a meeting with Sarkozy were dropped, at the Dalai Lama's request, to avoid angering China and setting back talks between Tibetan and Chinese parties, Sarkozy's office and members of the Buddhist leader's entourage said.
But French commentators suggested that Paris persuaded the Dalai Lama not to request a meeting to avoid straining its relations with Beijing.
Ruling party deputy Lionnel Luca, who heads a French parliamentary study group on Tibet, says lawmakers were pressured into hosting the Tibetan leader in their private offices, instead of the main Senate building.
"We are sneaking him in through the basement," he charged this week, saying it was "shameful" the Dalai Lama be denied a red carpet welcome.
France is struggling to mend ties with China frayed by Sarkozy's initial threat to boycott the opening of the Beijing Games, together with pro-Tibet protests during the passage of the Olympic flame through Paris.
The country is home to an estimated 770,000 Buddhists, according to the French Buddhist union, three quarters of them of Asian origin.
- AFP/yb
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