'US wants UN to take up Dalai Lama succession'

Washington DC: The United States wants the United Nations (UN) to take up the Dalai Lama's succession in an intensifying bid to stop China from trying to handpick his successor, an envoy said after meeting the Tibetan spiritual leader.

Sam Brownback, the US ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, said he spoke at length about the succession issue with the 84-year-old Dalai Lama last week in the monk's home-in-exile of Dharamsala, India.

Brownback said he told the Dalai Lama that the US would seek to build global support for the principle that the choice of the next spiritual chief "belongs to the Tibetan Buddhists and not the Chinese government." "I would hope that the UN would take the issue up," Brownback said after returning to Washington.

He acknowledged that China, with its veto power on the UNSC, would work strenuously to block any action, but he hoped countries could at least raise their voices at the UN. "I think it's really important to have an early global conversation because this is a global figure with a global impact," he said. "That's the big thing that we're really after now, to stir this before we're right in the middle of it — if something happens to the Dalai Lama, that there has been this robust discussion globally about it ahead of time," he said. "My estimation undoubtedly is that the (Chinese) communist party has thought a lot about this. So they've got a plan and I think we have to be equally aggressive with a plan."