Tibet Wrangle Settled?

A major diplomatic incident may have been avoided today after comments by the Green Party Leader John Gormley at a party conference provoked a walk-out by the Chinese ambassador on Saturday.

Mr Gormely said that Tibet was a country - enraging Chinese diplomats present.

He said: "Respect for human rights must extend to all cultures and countries. One country which has been exploited and suppressed and suffered for far too long is Tibet," he said.

The Chinese Ambassador, Liu Biwei, who had been invited by the Greens to a conference, immediately left the hall during the televised speech, along with two embassy staff.

"It is not acceptable and I lodge my strong protests. So I must leave to show my strong protests," he told journalists, through an interpreter.

The ambassador had been warned before the speech by the party's General Secretary, Colm Ó Caomhánaigh, that Mr Gormley would be critical of China's treatment of Tibet.

A spokesman for the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dermot Ahern has since said that the Minister was "happy to hear that the contents of the speech had been signalled in advance".

However, Mr Ahern put some distance between himself and Mr Gormley by saying the Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama, "isn't even referring to [Tibet] as a separate country".

"The Dalai Lama accepts that they are not looking for independence. They are looking for an autonomous Tibet, which is an awful lot different to an independent country. That may very well be what the ambassador took offence to," said Mr Ahern.

Asked if Mr Gormley's remarks - about which he refuses to apologise - would hit Irish business interests in China, the Chinese ambassador said the Green Party leader's "personal perspective" could "do nothing good" for relations. "We want to have good relations with the Irish people, and I hope our relations, including our economic relations, can still go on," said the ambassador.

(BMcC)