BERLIN - German Chancellor Angela Merkel is willing to meet the Dalai Lama again despite a spat over their last encounter that damaged ties with China, a German newspaper said Saturday.
Merkel, who met Tibet's spiritual leader in exile last September, will be in Latin America during his next visit to Germany May 16-20 when he will meet lower house speaker Norbert Lammert.
"But I will most certainly meet the Dalai Lama at a later date," she told the Sunday edition of the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine in an article released in advance.
"My receiving the Dalai Lama and China's behaviour towards him are two entirely separate things," she was quoted as saying.
"But both guide the way in which we behave in matters of respect or non-respect of human rights, and here Germany's attitude is explicit, including receiving the Dalai Lama," Merkel added.
Merkel has been more vocal than her predecessor Gerhard Schroeder in criticising the human rights records of Russia and China.
Her last meeting with the Dalai Lama precipitated a crisis in relations with China. It was only in January during a visit here by Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi that his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier could speak of a return to normality.
Merkel has rejected an Olympics boycott, saying this would only penalise games participants. Her spokesman said she would not attend the opening in Beijing in August, but stressed that this had never been planned.
Last month Merkel called for peaceful and direct dialogue between Beijing and the Dalai Lama over the current unrest in Tibet.
"A lasting solution to the Tibet question can perhaps only be found through a peaceful and direct dialogue between the Chinese government and the Dalai Lama," said her spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm.
It was "important that demonstrators, like the police forces, be urged to show moderation and the rights of each be taken into consideration."
Germany backed the Tibetans' rights to religious and cultural autonomy," while "supporting the policy of a single China."
Merkel faced intense criticism from her Christian Democrats' partners in the ruling coalition, the Social Democrats, for her decision to receive the Dail Lamae last September.
Both Schroeder, and Steinmeier, a Social Democrat, said the meeting was a mistake and may have damaged Germany's interests.
Merkel remained unapologetic. "Human rights policy and representing our economic interests all over the world are for us two sides of the same coin," she said in January.
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04/12/2008 13:56 GMT