Officials snub Dalai Lama during visit to Germany

Controversy fills 5-day stop by spiritual leader

The Dalai Lama ended his visit with a big rally at the Brandenburg Gate, the symbol of Germany's reunification. (MICHAEL GOTTSCHALK/AFP/Getty Images)

BERLIN - The Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet, yesterday ended a five-day visit to Germany that became mired in controversy because only one government minister agreed to meet with him.

Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, the development minister, met with the Dalai Lama yesterday. She apparently did so against the wishes of Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and the leader of the Social Democrats, Kurt Beck. Both had said that no senior party leaders would meet with the Dalai Lama.

Chancellor Angela Merkel, who met with the Dalai Lama in the chancellery in September, was on a weeklong tour of Latin America during his latest visit.

The Chinese Embassy in Berlin spoke out against Wieczorek-Zeul's meeting.

"We object to a member of the German government receiving the Dalai Lama, and to Germany allowing him to carry out this visit," Junhui Zhang, a Chinese diplomat told The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper.

He accused the Dalai Lama of "playing politics" ahead of the Olympics, which will be held in Beijing in August.

The Dalai Lama ended his visit with a big rally at the Brandenburg Gate, the symbol of Germany's reunification. There were makeshift posters criticizing Steinmeier and President Horst Kohler, who said he could not find the time to meet the Tibetan, according to his office.

Wieczorek-Zeul said yesterday that she was not prepared to follow a party line or bow to pressure from Beijing. Before their 45-minute meeting at a hotel in Berlin, she said: "I don't understand the excitement about the meeting with the Dalai Lama. I regularly talk with religious leaders. Why not with the Dalai Lama?"

The original venue was to have been her ministry but that was changed, apparently to play down the official nature of the occasion.