Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama on Saturday defended his visit to Denmark as apolitical after China warned his talks with Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen could affect ties with Denmark.
The 73-year-old Dalai Lama, who was in Denmark as part of a European tour that will also take him to France, Iceland and Poland, said his visit was “not political, but spiritual and educational.”
Rasmussen had qualified Friday’s 45-minute meeting as private and not political.
China on Saturday denounced the meeting.
“Ignoring numerous formal approaches by China, Danish Prime Minister Rasmussen and Foreign Minister [Per Stig] Moeller persisted in meeting the Dalai Lama who came to Denmark to carry out separatist activities,” Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Qin Gang (秦剛) said in a statement.
The “meetings severely harmed China’s essential interests and relations between China and Denmark,” he said.
Moeller later deplored Beijing’s negative reaction.
“We regret China’s decision,” he said in a statement, adding that talks with the Dalai Lama would not change Denmark’s policy of seeking stronger ties with China.
Beijing accuses the Dalai Lama of wanting to establish an independent Tibet.
The Dalai Lama repeated that he was not seeking independence and expressed dismay that Beijing continued to label him a separatist.
“We are not seeking independence,” he said, adding that he has “repeated [that] a thousand times.”
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
A Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I
At first, Francis Ari Sture thought a human was trying to shove him down the steep Norwegian mountainside. Then he saw the golden eagle land. “We are staring at each other for, maybe, a whole minute,” Sture said on Monday. “I’m trying to think what’s in its mind.” The bird then attacked Sture five more times on Thursday last week, scratching and clawing the 31-year-old bicycle courier’s face and arms over 10 to 15 minutes as he sprinted down the mountain. The same eagle is believed to be responsible for attacks on three other people across a vast mountainous area of southern Norway