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Dalai Lama to make brief stop in Japan next week
Posted: April 1st, 2008, by MeYuL.com
April 1, 2008 Reuters
TOKYO: The Dalai Lama will make a brief stopover in Japan when he travels to the United States from India next week, possibly irritating China, which has accused the exiled spiritual leader of masterminding last month’s protests in Tibet.
An official for the Dalai Lama’s Tokyo liaison office said the Nobel peace laureate may hold a news conference during his April 10 visit.
But there are no plans for him to meet Japanese political figures and he will probably stay in a hotel near the airport outside Tokyo, Tsewang Arya said.
Rights groups have criticised China’s crackdown on March’s anti-government protests in Tibet, but Japan’s comments on the unrest have been guarded, reflecting its eagerness to keep improving ties with Beijing on track.
Chinese President Hu Jintao is scheduled to visit Japan for six days from May 6, Kyodo news agency reported on Monday, the first visit by a Chinese president to Japan in a decade.
“We have to think hard whether it is appropriate to be outspoken at this time,” Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda told Japanese media last week.
The Dalai Lama last visited Japan in November, when he met an opposition party executive and delivered a speech to a religious forum.
Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura, asked on Tuesday by reporters to comment on the planned stopover, gave a measured response.
“The Dalai Lama has visited Japan many times in the past and each time we have dealt with the situation appropriately,” he said. “We’ll continue to do so from now on as well.”
(Reporting by Chisa Fujioka; Editing by John Chalmers)
April 2nd, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Japan’s Emperor Akihito and other members of the royal family are unlikely to attend the Beijing Olympics amid concerns here about China’s crackdown in Tibet and other issues, a report said Wednesday.
The Japanese government thinks it is not a good time for a rare royal visit because of the unrest in Tibet, a recent health scare over Chinese-made “gyoza” dumplings and a spat over disputed gas fields, the Sankei daily said.
“We were planning not to ask royals to go even before the gyoza incident (surfaced in January). It is all the more true now that the Tibetan unrest occurred,” it quoted an unnamed government official as saying.
Japanese authorities have confirmed at least 10 people suffered pesticide poisoning after eating tainted dumplings imported from China.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao invited Emperor Akihito and other royals to the opening ceremony of the August Olympics when he visited Japan last year.
The emperor told Wen then that the government decides on the royal family’s foreign trips, a palace spokesman said.
The foreign ministry said no formal decision had been made.
“Nothing has been decided regarding the attendance of dignitaries,” a ministry official said.
The last trip to China by members of Japan’s imperial household was a landmark visit by Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko in 1992.
China remains deeply resentful over Japan’s brutal occupation from 1931 to 1945, an era in which the Japanese revered Akihito’s father Hirohito as a demigod.
The two countries have recently worked to mend ties, which were strained by former Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi’s annual visits to a war shrine in Tokyo, which Beijing regards as a symbol of Japan’s militarist past.
Chinese President Hu Jintao is expected to visit Japan in the coming months.
http://www.france24.com/en/20080402-japans-royals-likely-skip-olympics-report