BEIJING: An angry protest over the presence of the Dalai Lama in Prague, the Chinese foreign ministry Saturday notified it was putting off the scheduled visit of a Czechoslovakia minister to China that was to have taken place later this month,
An official of the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s Soviet and East European Affairs Department summoned Czechoslovakia Ambassador Eduard Saul to lodge a protest against the Tibetan religious leader’s visit to Prague, which began on Friday.
The Chinese official said Czechoslovakia president Vaclav Havel’s “insistence on inviting the Dalai Lama to Czechoslovakia in disregard of the solemn position made clear to him in advance by the Chinese side constitutes a gross interference in China’s internal affairs.”
The Dalai Lama’s trip had “harmed the traditional friendship between the two countries,” the Chinese official said.
He added that “in the present circumstances, the Chinese government could not but postpone,” the visit to China of Czechoslovakia minister of metallurgy, engineering and electro-technical industry, Vodrazka starting on February 17. Czechoslovakia has maintained that the visit was of a private nature.
Ambassador Saul had explained that the invitation to the Dalai Lama was inspired by President Havel’s own experience as a fighter for Human Rights in his country and that it was unrelated to his country’s stand on Tibet.
Article extracted from this publication >> February 16, 1990
