China protests US award to Dalai Lama -- china.org.cn

Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi on Thursday summoned US ambassador to China Clark Randt to express strong protest on behalf of the Chinese government for the Capitol's awarding to the Dalai Lama, Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said.

The move of the US is a wanton interference in China's internal affairs, has hurt the feelings of the Chinese people and gravely undermined its relations with China, Liu told a press briefing on Thursday.

Tibet is an inalienable part of the Chinese territory, Liu said, adding the Tibet issue is purely China's internal affairs.

China resolutely opposes any country or any people to make use of the Dalai Lama issue to interfere its domestic affairs, he said.

"The words and deeds of the Dalai Lama in the past decades show he is a political refugee engaged in secessionist activities in the camouflage of religion," Liu said.

The so-called US congressional award to the Dalai Lama and the meetings of US leaders with him "have severely trampled on the norms of international relations and violated the US government's reiterated position on the Tibet issue," Liu said.

"We express our strong dissatisfaction and resolute opposition toward this," he said.

Chinese people's determination to safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity is unswerving and any attempt to interfere in China's internal affairs using the Dalai problem is doomed to fail, Liu said.

US Congressional-Executive annual report

"China is strongly dissatisfied with and firmly opposed to America's groundless accusations about China's social and judicial systems, ethnic and religious policies, as well as human rights situation in a recently released 2007 annual report from the US Congressional-Executive Commission on China," Liu said.

The annual report ignored China's progress and achievements made in the fields of human rights and the legal system, Liu said.

The Chinese government suggested the US congress and relevant institutions pay more attention to their own problems, and stop interfering in China's internal affairs by releasing such a report, he said.

"We demand that the US government seriously treat our solemn stance and take substantial measures to remove the adverse impact of the report," Liu said.

Six-party talks

Chinese and US officials planned to make contact on Thursday afternoon after a working group of US experts returned from Pyongyang to Beijing.

Liu said as a follow-up measure to the second phase of the sixth round of the six-party talks and a consensus reached by all involved parties, a working group of US nuclear experts conducted a trip to North Korea from October 11 to 18 to make preparations for the future disabling of the country's nuclear facilities.

The working group on economic and energy cooperation would also hold a meeting soon on the second-phase actions for the implementation of the Joint Statement adopted on September 19, 2005, Liu added.

The Second-Phase Actions for the Implementation of the Joint Statement, which was released on October 3, marked a new progress in the whole six-party talks process, and China hoped the document could be implemented in a all-round, balanced, and smooth way, Liu noted.

Trilateral meeting

Foreign ministers of China, Russia, and India will meet in northeast China's Harbin City on October 24 to discuss trilateral cooperation, Liu said.

The ministers will exchange views on major international and regional issues and discuss "pragmatic cooperation" among the three countries, Liu said.

Turkey's approval of Iraq incursion

Liu called on concerned parties to properly handle the related issue through dialogue and consultation, when responding to a question on the Turkish parliament's approval of a motion for cross-border operations into Iraq.

The Turkish parliament on Wednesday approved by 507 votes to 19 a motion submitted by the government for cross-border military operations in the fight against the outlawed Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK).

The PKK has increased its attacks on government troops in southeastern Turkey, which has led to rising Turkish demands for an incursion into northern Iraq to crush the rebels based there.

The group, listed as a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US, and the EU, launched an armed campaign for an ethnic homeland in the mainly Kurdish southeastern Turkey in 1984, sparking decades of strife that has claimed more than 30,000 lives.

(Xinhua News Agency October 19, 2007)