China today accused America of undermining bilateral relations by offering an official welcome to the Dalai Lama.

President Bush was today due to hold talks at the White House with the exiled spiritual leader of Tibet, and tomorrow the US Congress will award him one of its highest civilian honours.

“This action will seriously damage China-US relations,” Liu Jianchao, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, told a press briefing. “We express strong dissatisfaction and our firm opposition. "

He added that China hoped the United States would “correct its mistakes and cancel relevant arrangements and stop interfering in the internal affairs of China by any means”.

Today's talks will be the third private encounter between the US President and the 72-year-old religious figure since Mr Bush took office in January 2001.

Tomorrow, however, Mr Bush is due to attend the public ceremony to award the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize laureate the Congressional Gold Medal - the first time a sitting US president will appear in public with him.

China has pulled out of a planned international strategy session on Iran tomorrow, prompting speculation that this is a diplomatic protest at the awards ceremony.

“I think they (the Chinese) had indigestion ... over the presence of certain spiritual leaders and an event in Congress,” said a US State Department official. “It is extraneous to Iranian issues."

Mr Liu would not confirm that this was a deliberate protest, saying only that there were “technical reasons" why China would not be attending the Iran meeting.

The six-nation diplomatic meeting is now expected to take place next week.

The spiritual leader's arrival in Washington yesterday was greeted by a crowd of Tibetans clad in traditional dress, offering blessings, songs and dances.

The Dalai Lama has been based in India since fleeing his Himalayan homeland in 1959 amid a failed uprising against Chinese rule. He lives in the northern hill town of Dharamsala, which is also the seat of his government-in-exile.

He remains immensely popular among Tibetans, despite efforts by Beijing to cast him as a mischief-maker seeking to destroy China’s sovereignty by pushing for independence for Tibet.

The Dalai Lama says he wants autonomy, not independence, for the region, which the mainland claims has been its territory for centuries. He is waging a non-violent campaign for greater rights for Tibet's six million people.

Foreign leaders have grown increasingly willing to risk Beijing’s wrath to underscore concerns for human rights in Tibet, which China has ruled with a heavy hand since communist forces invaded in 1951.

Last month, Chancellor Merkel of Germany also met the Dalai Lama, a move which also drew harsh criticism from China. It responded by pulling out of a Germany-China symposium in Munich and axed an annual event scheduled for December in Beijing to discuss human rights.

Last year, Canada’s granting of honorary citizenship to the Dalai Lama raised a similar protest. The Dalaia Lama is due to meet Stephen Harper, the Canadian Prime Minister, this month.

China’s rhetoric against the Dalai Lama has been increasing in line with his accolades abroad, even though the government and the Dalai’s envoys are engaged in a tentative dialogue process.

Zhang Qingli, the Communist Party secretary of Tibet, today criticised the exiled spiritual leader as a politician who “has tried to split the motherland”.

“This is brutal interference in China’s internal affairs,” Mr Zhang said at a meeting along the sidelines of the party’s 17th congress. “We express our firm opposition and grave objection. ... We feel very angry about this.”

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