[Archbishop
Tutu lashed out at the South African government, calling its conduct
disgraceful and discourteous toward the Dalai Lama. At a news conference in
Cape Town, he also criticized President Jacob Zuma and his African
National Congress. “Hey Mr. Zuma, you and your government don’t
represent me,” he told reporters. “You represent your own interests.”]
By Lydia
Polgreen
 |
Ashwini Bhatia/Associated Press
The Dalai Lama, center, arrived to
give a talk at the Tsuglakhang
temple in
Dharmsala, India, on Tuesday. |
NEW DELHI — The Dalai Lama, Tibet’s
exiled spiritual leader, scrapped plans on Tuesday to attend the 80th birthday
celebration of a fellow Nobel laureate, Desmond
M. Tutuof South
Africa, after the host government did not grant his visa request.
Critics
viewed the South African government’s behavior as a capitulation to China,
one of South Africa’s most important economic partners and a strong opponent of
the Dalai Lama, whom the Chinese authorities consider subversive.
A
statement by the Dalai Lama’s office in New Delhi said he and his entourage had
expected to visit South Africa from Thursday to Oct. 14, had submitted visa
applications at the end of August and had submitted their passports two weeks
ago. His agenda included the Oct. 6 birthday of Archbishop Tutu and a number of
public talks.
However,
his office said in a statement, “Since the South African government seems to
find it inconvenient to issue a visa to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, His
Holiness has decided to call off this visit to South Africa.”
The
statement did not address the question of why South Africa did not grant the
visa, and the South African Embassy in New Delhi did not immediately respond to
a request for comment. But officials in South Africa said they followed normal
procedures in reviewing the visa request.
Archbishop
Tutu lashed out at the South African government, calling its conduct
disgraceful and discourteous toward the Dalai Lama. At a news conference in
Cape Town, he also criticized President Jacob Zuma and his African
National Congress. “Hey Mr. Zuma, you and your government don’t
represent me,” he told reporters. “You represent your own interests.”
He also
dismissed what he considered the government’s weak explanation for not granting
the visa. “Clearly, whether they say so or not, they were quite determined that
they are not going to do anything that would upset the Chinese,” he said.
Many
have accused South Africa of buckling under pressure from China, which has
accused the Dalai Lama of trying to split Tibet from China and create an
independent state. The Dalai Lama has said he does not favor independence but
has criticized what he calls Chinese repression of Tibet’s religious and
cultural traditions.
Even
before the Dalai Lama’s announcement on Tuesday, South Africa’s government had
come under harsh criticism for not promptly issuing the Dalai Lama a visa.
Cosatu, a powerful coalition of trade unions, criticized the government for
allowing China to influence South Africa’s foreign policy, South Africa’s Sapa
news agency reported.
“Even
though China is our biggest trading partner, we should not exchange our
morality for dollars or yuan,” the news agency quoted Tony Ehrenreich, a Cosatu
leader, as saying.
Loyiso
Nongxa, vice chancellor of the University of the Witwatersrand, said in a
statement that denying the Dalai Lama permission to visit undermined South
Africa’s long struggle against injustice.
“The
state’s deliberate indecision ridicules the values pertaining to freedom of
speech, expression and movement enshrined in our Constitution and the freedoms
for which so many South African have lived, and indeed died,” Professor Nongxa
said.
Last
week, the Desmond Tutu Peace
Center, an advocacy group co-founded by him, and the Pretoria branch
of the Office of Tibet, the official name of Tibet’s government in exile,
issued a joint statement calling the failure to issue the visa in a timely
manner “profoundly disrespectful of two Nobel Peace laureates who are among the
most revered spiritual leaders on earth.”
That
statement coincided with a visit to China by South Africa’s vice president,
Kgalema Motlanthe, who signed multiple trade and development agreements.
@ TheNew York Times
AFGHANISTANFAVORS INDIA AND DENIGRATES PAKISTAN
[There is
evidence that Pakistan’s spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services
Intelligence, has used militant groups as proxy fighters in Afghanistan, and
may have been behind the bombing of the Indian Embassy here in 2009. Pakistan
has denied such accusations. But it has questioned why India opened consulates
in Mazar-i-Sharif, Kandahar and Jalalabad in addition to its embassy in Kabul,
suggesting that they are surveillance posts]
AFGHANISTANFAVORS INDIA AND DENIGRATES PAKISTAN
[There is
evidence that Pakistan’s spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services
Intelligence, has used militant groups as proxy fighters in Afghanistan, and
may have been behind the bombing of the Indian Embassy here in 2009. Pakistan
has denied such accusations. But it has questioned why India opened consulates
in Mazar-i-Sharif, Kandahar and Jalalabad in addition to its embassy in Kabul,
suggesting that they are surveillance posts]
By Jack Healy And Alissa
J. Rubin
Two developments set the tone: In New Delhi, President Hamid Karzai of
Afghanistan signed a wide-ranging strategic partnership with India,
which Pakistan regards as its principal adversary. Mr. Karzai’s visit also
underscored the growing economic and security ties between India and
Afghanistan.
And here in Kabul, intelligence officials investigating the
assassination of the head of Afghanistan’s peace process said that Pakistan was
refusing to cooperate with their inquiry and that it had failed to crack down
on Taliban leaders who, the Afghans say, planned the killing from inside
Pakistan.
The moves were all but certain to draw further ire from Pakistan.
The strategic agreement signed Tuesday by Mr. Karzai and the Indian
prime minister, Manmohan Singh, had been in the making for more than five
months.
Perhaps most provocatively for the Pakistanis, it paves the way for
India to train and equip Afghan security forces to fill what the Afghanistan
government fears will be critical gaps as NATO troops leave in the years ahead.
Pakistan and India, nuclear-armed neighbors, have long suspected each other’s
motives in Afghanistan.
There is evidence that Pakistan’s spy agency, the Directorate for
Inter-Services Intelligence, has used militant groups as proxy fighters in
Afghanistan, and may have been behind the bombing of the Indian Embassy here in
2009. Pakistan has denied such accusations. But it has questioned why India
opened consulates in Mazar-i-Sharif, Kandahar and Jalalabad in addition to its
embassy in Kabul, suggesting that they are surveillance posts.
Over the past 10 years India has spent nearly $2 billion in aid to
Afghanistan, mainly on reconstruction, road building, health clinics and an
array of small development projects. India also runs a scholarship program for
Afghan students, not unlike the American Fulbright program.
Wealthy Afghans often travel to India for medical treatment. The number
of flights weekly from Kabul, the Afghan capital, to New Delhi has risen
steadily over the past several years as young professionals journey there for
training programs and trade.
Although Mr. Karzai’s trip had long been scheduled in advance, it fell
at a particularly strained moment for relations between Afghanistan and
Pakistan, coming two weeks after a suicide bomber assassinated the head of the
Afghan High Peace Council, former President Burhanuddin Rabbani.
His killing threw the peace process into disarray and stirred tirades
against Pakistan, as officials in Parliament and Afghans in the streets of the
capital accused their neighbor of fostering insurgent groups suspected of
orchestrating the assassination.
Just a week before Mr. Rabbani was killed, militants from the
Pakistan-based Haqqani network conducted a brazen attack against the
American Embassy in
Kabul, transforming the capital into a battle zone for 20 hours. Adm. Mike
Mullen, the just-departed chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Pakistan’s spy agency
had supported the attack.
Afghan investigators say the plot to kill Mr. Rabbani was hatched in the
Pakistani border town of Quetta, a stronghold of the Taliban leadership. Some
Afghan officials have publicly accused Pakistan’s spy agency of complicity in
the killing — charges that Pakistan has rejected as baseless. On Tuesday,
intelligence officials in Kabul jabbed yet another accusatory finger toward
Pakistan. They said Pakistani officials had scuttled a meeting to discuss Mr.
Rabbani’s assassination and would not cooperate in the investigation.
At a news conference, intelligence officials showed satellite images of
Quetta, highlighting three houses with yellow circles. Those, officials said,
were the homes of so-called shadow governors of the Taliban and other officials
whom Pakistani security forces had not arrested.
Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry did not respond to the latest complaints,
but in a statement released a day earlier, the ministry cast doubt on “the so-called
evidence” tying Pakistan’s spy agency to Mr. Rabbani’s killing.
“Professor Burhanuddin Rabbani was a great friend of Pakistan and widely
respected in this country,” the statement said.
