Posted on 10/24/2001 12:06:29 PM PDT by KantianBurke
STRASBOURG, France, Oct. 24 (UPI) -- Tibet's Nobel Prize winning, exiled spiritual leader on Wednesday criticized the Western response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.
"You can eliminate people but you cannot eliminate human thought," the Dalai Lama said at a news conference. "The way to defeat terrorism in the long run is through thought, argument and reasoning. Once you commit violence it is unpredictable and it causes side effects."
His comments came after he spoke before the European Parliament.
Tibet's spiritual leader refused to condemn the U.S.-led bombing of Afghanistan, however.
"They (the Americans and the British) know more about these things than I do," he said. He compared the joint action with the two World Wars and said, "This is a sign of civilization."
He said the day after the Sept. 11 "unthinkable" attacks on New York and Washington, he wrote to President George W. Bush.
"On the 12th, I wrote a letter, which expressed my sadness and my sympathy, and I told President Bush that the best way to counter terrorism is the non-violent way," he said.
But the Dalai Lama criticized what he described as the United States' lack of concern for "democratic principles" in its foreign policy.
"As far as domestic policy is concerned, they think democracy, democracy, democracy," he said. "But American foreign policy is not much concerned for democratic principles."
Tibet's spiritual leader has lived in exile in India since 1959 when he fled his homeland. China had invaded Tibet nine years earlier.
Since then, he has campaigned for greater freedom in Tibet; Beijing regards him as a troublemaker, however, and criticized the European Parliament for inviting him to address them Wednesday.
Dialogue remained "the only sensible and intelligent way of resolving differences and clashes of interest," the Dalai Lama said.
The parliament gave the Dalai Lama four standing ovations for his speech in Tibetan on the virtues of non-violence.
While he called for a conference of non-governmental organizations, writers and thinkers together with religious leaders to consider the next stages of the war on terrorism, European Parliament President Nicole Fontaine said the parliament had called for a solution to the Middle East peace process and for "positive non-violent measures to be put in place once the military action in Afghanistan is over."
Her comments came when Britain, a member of the European Union, and the United States were conducting airstrikes on Afghanistan in retaliation for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington that killed some 6,000 people.
Another FReeper brought up a good point re: people who like to say that "we funded OBL when helping them escape the USSR"... why is it cool to Free Tibet from communist aggressors, but it wasn't cool to Free Afghanistan?
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