Obama to see Dalai Lama next week despite China ire

Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama gives his blessing to the audience during a talk in Melbourne December 10, 2009.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House announced on Thursday that President Barack Obama and the Dalai Lama would meet on February 18, despite China's warning that such talks could hurt already-strained Sino-U.S. relations.

Obama's White House meeting with the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader is likely to set off a new round of sniping from Beijing, which has seen tensions with Washington rise over issues from trade to currencies to U.S. arms sales to Taiwan.

"The Dalai Lama is an internationally respected religious leader and spokesman for Tibetan rights, and the president looks forward to an engaging and constructive dialogue," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.

Mindful of Chinese sensibilities, Obama had held off meeting the Dalai Lama, whom Beijing deems a dangerous separatist, until after the president first saw Chinese leaders during a trip to Asia in November.

But the White House made clear in recent days that it would shrug off China's fierce opposition. All that was left was to set the date for Obama's first meeting with the Dalai Lama since taking office a year ago.

Strains over the Dalai Lama and other issues have raised worries that China might retaliate by obstructing U.S. efforts in other areas, such as imposing tougher sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program.

But Gibbs insisted the relationship between the United States and China -- the world's largest and third-biggest economies -- is "mature enough" to find common ground on issues of mutual interest despite disagreements on other topics.

He said Obama, for example, has not been shy about talking to the Chinese about U.S. concerns over their currency and problems with Internet freedom. "We know that two countries aren't going to agree on everything," Gibbs said.

Adding to tensions, Obama vowed last week to address currency problems with Beijing and to "get much tougher" with it on trade to ensure U.S. goods do not face a competitive disadvantage.

China is the single biggest holder of U.S. Treasuries, owning at least $776.4 billion of U.S. government debt at the end of June 2009, according to statistics from Washington.

IRATE OVER DALAI LAMA, TAIWAN ARMS

Beijing, which has become increasingly vocal in opposing contacts between foreign leaders and the Dalai Lama, has tried to turn up the heat on Obama over his planned meeting.

Zhu Weiqun, a vice minister of the United Front Work Department of China's ruling Communist Party, said last week that such a meeting "would damage trust and cooperation between our two countries, and how would that help the United States surmount the current economic crisis?"

Previous U.S. presidents, including Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, have met the Dalai Lama, drawing angry words from Beijing but no substantive reprisals.

The Dalai Lama has said he wants a high level of genuine autonomy for his homeland, which he fled in 1959. China says his demands amount to calling for outright independence.

China recently hosted talks with envoys of the Dalai Lama but they achieved little. The United States says it accepts Tibet is a part of China but wants Beijing to sit down with the Dalai Lama to address differences over the region's future.

Beijing is already irate over U.S. proposals last week to sell $6.4 billion of weapons to Taiwan, the island that China treats as an illegitimate breakaway province.

China has vowed to impose unspecified sanctions against U.S. companies selling arms to Taiwan and curtail military-to-military contacts.

Senior Chinese military officers have proposed that their country boost defense spending and possibly sell some U.S. bonds to punish Washington for its latest round of proposed arms sales to Taiwan.

Despite that, U.S. officials said on Thursday that China had cleared a U.S. aircraft carrier, the USS Nimitz, to visit Hong Kong next week. The visit would mark a concession from Beijing.

(Additional reporting by Jim Wolf in Washington and James Pomfret in Hong Kong; Editing by Eric Walsh)