*All Roads lead to God Bush to meet Dalai Lama*

 From correspondents in Washington

October 12, 2007 06:45am
Article from: Agence France-Presse

US President George W. Bush will meet on October 16 with Tibet's exiled
spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, the White House announced today.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino did not specify whether the meeting
would take place at the White House or at another venue.

Mr Bush in the past has received the Dalai Lama at his private White
House residence.

The US president and the exiled Tibetan leader are to meet one day
before the Dalai Lama receives the Congressional Gold Medal in a Capitol
Hill ceremony which the president is expected to attend.

The congressional award is reserved for individuals who display the
highest moral courage. Past recipients have included Pope John Paul II,
Mother Teresa, Elie Wiesel and Nelson Mandela.

A meeting between the Dalai Lama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel
sparked a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Berlin in late
September, but Ms Perino said Mr Bush has not been dissuaded from the
upcoming meetings by China's expressed concerns.

"He believes that as a leader and as the president of the United States
and someone who always attends a Congressional Gold Medal ceremony, that
he is going to go and he will proudly be there to witness the event,"
she said.

Ms Perino said that the US government hopes that Chinese President Hu
Jintao "would get to know the Dalai Lama as the president sees him, as a
spiritual leader and someone who wants peace".

The Dalai Lama, the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize winner, earlier this year was
named a distinguished professor at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia
- the first time he has accepted a university appointment.

He is to deliver an inaugural lecture during an October 20-22 visit to
the university, which has a prominent Tibetan studies program.

The Dalai Lama fled Tibet in 1959 and set up a Tibetan government in
exile in Dharamsala, India after China crushed an uprising against its
rule.