Merkel urges China to overcome "fear" of dialogue

By Dave Graham

BERLIN (Reuters) - China's leaders should regard the Olympic Games as an opportunity to address their "fear" of dialogue, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a newspaper interview published on Saturday.

"I hope the Olympic Games in China become a Games of dialogue, and that China overcomes its fear of this. This is emphatically the case for the conflict over Tibet," Merkel told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

Merkel angered Beijing when she welcomed the exiled spiritual leader of Tibet, the Dalai Lama, in Berlin last year.

She told the paper she would not meet him on his planned visit to Germany in May. "I'll be in Latin America taking part in the EU-Latin America summit," she said. "But I'll certainly meet the Dalai Lama again."

The meeting last year caused a chill in relations between Beijing and Germany, China's biggest trading partner in Europe.

Merkel later told a news conference with the Norwegian prime minister in Oslo she had no plans to meet the Dalai Lama before the Beijing Olympics but expected to meet him again in future.

"We think we must have a dialogue with China and also with the Dalai Lama's representatives," said Merkel during a one-day visit. "It's important to solve problems through dialogue."

Merkel has said she will not attend the opening ceremony of the Olympics. The run-up to the Games has been marked by protests at China's treatment of predominantly Buddhist Tibet.