Dalai Lama unperturbed by refusal of Czech presidents to meet him

The Dalai Lama says he does not mind the fact that the current and most recent Czech presidents, Miloš Zeman and Václav Klaus, have refused to meet him. Speaking on the last day of the Forum 2000 conference in Prague, the Tibetan spiritual leader said that as he did not have an agenda linked to the Czech government, meetings with such important leaders were not so important. Some Czech politicians have in the past expressed the opinion that supporting the Dalai Lama, who was a good friend of the late president Václav Havel, could damage the country’s economic ties with China.