Shadow Government

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A prize-winning snub

The greatest of the many ironies of President Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize is that it was announced on the day he blew off one of the most deserving winners of the prize in its history: His Holiness the Dalai Lama of Tibet. The Dalai Lama has met the president of the United States ...

By , the CEO of the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney.

The greatest of the many ironies of President Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize is that it was announced on the day he blew off one of the most deserving winners of the prize in its history: His Holiness the Dalai Lama of Tibet.

The greatest of the many ironies of President Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize is that it was announced on the day he blew off one of the most deserving winners of the prize in its history: His Holiness the Dalai Lama of Tibet.

The Dalai Lama has met the president of the United States on every one of his visits to Washington since 1991 — until now. The White House decided it would be smarter to postpone the visit until after President Obama’s visit to China, after initially indicating to the Tibetans that there would be a meeting with the president per usual. It appears that the Chinese side implored the administration not to meet the Dalai Lama this time because of the particular sensitivity of the Tibet issue at this juncture for President Hu Jintao.

Of course, the Chinese demarched the Bush and Clinton White Houses and argued that it was a "particularly bad time to see the Dalai Lama" every other time he came to Washington as well. Unfortunately, the Chinese may now concluded that the Tibet issue has fallen permanently on the back burner for the United States. This is the Tibetans’ understandable fear. President Obama can correct that impression by pressing Beijing for concrete action on issues of importance to Tibet — like excessive Han migration into the region — when he is in Beijing. The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize was given in anticipation of great things, and the president’s November trip to China will be a good time to start repaying the vote of confidence from Norway.

Michael J. Green is the CEO of the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a distinguished scholar at the Asia Pacific Institute in Tokyo, and a former senior National Security Council official on Asia policy during the George W. Bush administration. Twitter: @DrMichaelJGreen

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