Lawmakers talk human rights with Dalai Lama in India

A bipartisan delegation of lawmakers discussed ongoing human rights concerns in Tibet during a visit with the Dalai Lama on Tuesday in India, Reuters reported. 

“As we visit His Holiness the Dalai Lama, our bipartisan delegation comes in his spirit of faith and peace,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said. “We come on this visit to be inspired by His Holiness and demonstrate our commitment to the Tibetan people, to their faith, their culture and their language.”

The meeting is likely to anger China at a time when President Trump is urging deeper cooperation between Washington and Beijing, Reuters noted.

{mosads}Beijing views the Dalai Lama, who fled to India from Tibet in 1959 after an unsuccessful uprising against China, as a separatist. The religious leader has long advocated for Tibetan independence. 

“Here the last 58 years I am the longest guest of Indian government,” he said, according to the news service. “But, emotionally, some concern about deep inside Tibet, and also in China proper there are 400 million Buddhists.”

Every U.S. president since George H.W. Bush has met with the Dalai Lama while in office, and the Buddhist leader said in November that he would plan on visiting Trump after his inauguration.

But it’s not clear if that meeting will take place, especially as Trump looks to put pressure on China to help rein in North Korea’s weapons programs. After meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping last month, Trump has softened his once-aggressive tone on Beijing and has sought to reinforce the U.S. relationship with China.

The lawmakers’ meeting in Tibet came after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told department employees that U.S. foreign policy under the Trump administration would focus more heavily on American interests and would be driven less by human rights concerns.

“In some circumstances, if you condition our national security efforts on someone adopting our values, we probably can’t achieve our national security goals or our national security interests,” Tillerson said. “If we condition too heavily that others must adopt this value that we’ve come to over a long history of our own, it really creates obstacles to our ability to advance our national security interests, our economic interests.”