Obama meets with Dalai Lama

BEIJING, July 16 (UPI) -- U.S. President Barack Obama spent about 45 minutes Saturday with the Dalai Lama, rejecting a call from China to cancel the meeting.

The meeting, which began just after 11:30 a.m., was private, the White House said. Neither Obama nor the Dalai Lama, the exiled leader of Tibet's Buddhists, made any statement about it.

The Dalai Lama celebrated his 76th birthday in Washington this month with a Buddhist ritual called "Turning of the Wheel of Time." He is scheduled to speak Sunday at the Theosophical Society in America in Wheaton, Ill., the Chicago Tribune reported.

"The president will highlight his enduring support for dialogue between the Dalai Lama's representatives and the Chinese government to resolve differences," a White House statement in advance of the meeting said.

Chinese officials firmly oppose any senior foreign government officials meeting with the Dalai Lama.

"The issue regarding Tibet concerns China's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and we firmly oppose any foreign official to meet with the Dalai Lama in any form," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told China's official Xinhua news agency.

Obama last met with the Dalai Lama in February 2010, the BBC said.