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Dalai Lama not invited to Moscow Religious Summit
Interfax, July 3, 2006
Moscow, Russia -- The organizers of the Moscow Religious Summit have not invited the Dalai-Lama to the forum because they do not want to endanger the Buddhist spiritual leader's emerging dialogue with the Chinese authorities, Metropolitan of Kaliningrad and Smolensk Kirill, head of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations, told Rossiya television.
"The following problems have arisen regarding the Dalai-Lama. As you know, the Dalai-Lama has quite difficult relations with the leadership of the People's Republic of China," he said.
"We also know that certain steps have been taken to accommodate each other's needs. We would not like to create difficulties for this process by inviting the Dalai-Lama, or even to endanger this process at the most crucial moment," he said.
The chairman of the Chinese department for religious affairs will attend the Moscow summit as a consultant, the metropolitan said. "We very much welcome this visit," he added.