For all of its talk about transparency, the White House shut out the press Thursday when President Barack Obama met with the Dalai Lama.

Instead, Obama met privately with the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader in the Map Room on the ground floor of the White House, far removed from reporters and photographers. Press secretary Robert Gibbs issued only a brief statement after the event, and the White House distributed a single in-house photo of the two leaders.

Typically, when a high-profile foreign dignitary is to meet with the president, photographers and reporters have an opportunity to take pictures and toss a few questions at the president and his guest at the beginning of their Oval Office meeting.

The Dalai Lama, however, is anything but a typical visiting dignitary. The Buddhist monk is viewed as a separatist by the Chinese government and his trips to Washington are always a sensitive matter. His visit forced the administration to balance its desire to avoid inflaming tensions with China with its promises of a new era of transparency in government.

Presidents past also have kept their encounters with the Dalai Lama mostly private. But Kelly McBride, leader of the Poynter Institute's ethics group, said it's hard for the Obama administration to square its pledges of openness with the effort to control coverage of the Dalai Lama.

"That's not very transparent," she said, adding that the administration appeared to be trying to control coverage without completely stifling it. "Trying to control what people make of the images is a difficult task, and probably one of the easiest ways to do that is to limit the number of images."

Asked why the White House had restricted press access, White House deputy press secretary Josh Earnest released the following statement: "Rather than restrict the president's meeting with the Dalai Lama to a limited group of photographers, the White House has made available a photo of the meeting at flickr.com/whitehouse to allow any individual or news outlet around the world to view and download that photo free of charge."

Ed Chen, president of the White House Correspondents Association, said a number of still photographers complained about being shut out of the event and said their news organizations would not distribute the handout photo.

The Associated Press declined to distribute the photo. Its policy bars distribution of handout photos when the news organization feels that media access to an event would have been possible, either as a group or through a pooled photo arrangement.

"Government-controlled coverage is not acceptable in societies that promote freedom," said Kathleen Carroll, executive editor of the AP. "And that is why we do not distribute government handouts of events that we believe should be open to the press and therefore the public at large."
After the meeting, the Tibetan leader did have his picture taken by news photographers on the White House driveway when he stopped to talk with reporters.

Obama's campaign pledges for more openness in government have produced mixed results.
He has rolled back Bush administration restrictions on presidential records, posted reams of data about spending under the giant stimulus package, and released logs of visitors to the White House. But his record on issues surrounding the Freedom of Information Act is uneven so far. And though he once advocated televising health care negotiations on C-SPAN, those talks played out in private in recent months.

There will be televised talks next week, though, when the president meets with Democratic and Republican legislative leaders to search for a health care compromise.

Presidents have wrestled with how to handle visits by the Dalai Lama for two decades.

George H.W. Bush allowed no photos of his 1991 talks with the Dalai Lama. Bill Clinton avoided formal sessions altogether, choosing instead to drop by the Dalai Lama's other meetings. George W. Bush kept his meetings under wraps, too. But in 2007, he broke with tradition and appeared in public with the Dalai Lama to present him with the Congressional Gold Medal at the Capitol.

Nearly three-quarters of all Americans think Tibet should be an independent country, according to a new national poll.
However, the CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Thursday also indicates that most Americans think it is more important to maintain good relations with China than to take a stand on Tibet.
The poll's release came as President Obama was to meet with the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader in exile, at the White House.
The Dalai Lama is popular with Americans, according to the survey, with 56 percent holding a favorable view of him and only 18 percent having an unfavorable impression.
"That puts him in the same neighborhood as other major religious figures," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "Favorable ratings for the pope, at 59 percent, and Billy Graham, at 57 percent, are virtually identical to the numbers for the Dalai Lama."
The poll also indicates that 53 percent say it's more important for the United States to take a strong stand on human rights in China than to maintain good relations with Beijing, with 44 percent saying good relations are more important.
Analysis: Meeting could hurt relations with China
By a 6-point margin, the survey also shows that more Americans say taking a strong stand on Taiwan by force is more important than maintaining good relations with Beijing.
The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll was conducted February 12-15, with 1,023 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey's sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points for the overall survey.
CNN Deputy Political Director Paul Steinhauser contributed to this story.

President Obama has just finished his first meeting as president with the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader. The session, held in the Map Room at the White House, lasted more than an hour.

The White House downplayed the meeting in an effort not to further anger China, which considers the Buddhist monk to be a separatist.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs issued this statement after the meeting:

"The President met this morning at the White House with His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama. The President stated his strong support for the preservation of Tibet's unique religious, cultural and linguistic identity and the protection of human rights for Tibetans in the People's Republic of China. The President commended the Dalai Lama's "Middle Way" approach, his commitment to nonviolence and his pursuit of dialogue with the Chinese government. The President stressed that he has consistently encouraged both sides to engage in direct dialogue to resolve differences and was pleased to hear about the recent resumption of talks. The President and the Dalai Lama agreed on the importance of a positive and cooperative relationship between the United States and China."

The Dalai Lama, who braved Washington's cold winds in his traditional robe and sandals to speak to reporters outside the White House, said he was "very happy" with the meeting.

He said he and Obama discussed the concerns of the Tibetan people, the promotion of greater leadership roles for women around the globe and religious tolerance.

(Posted by Mimi Hall)

The Dalai Lama's chief envoy said Tuesday that President Barack Obama probably will not make a public appearance this week with the Tibetan spiritual leader during a White House visit that is already infuriating China.

Briefing reporters Tuesday on the eve of the Dalai Lama's arrival, Lodi Gyari said Thursday's meeting in the White House between the Nobel Peace laureates, even if out of the public eye, would be an important boost for Tibet and for the broader U.S. commitment to human rights.

A joint appearance by Obama and the Dalai Lama before reporters could make tense U.S.-China ties even worse and further complicate U.S. efforts to secure Chinese help in settling North Korean and Iranian nuclear standoffs and crucial economic, military and environmental problems.

The Dalai Lama, who has met with every U.S. president for the last two decades, is a recurring needle in U.S.-Chinese ties. China accuses the monk of pushing for Tibetan independence, which he has denied repeatedly. The Chinese consider the Dalai Lama's meetings with any foreign leaders to be an infringement on Chinese sovereignty.

This week's meeting follows a tense couple of months in the U.S.-Chinese relationship, which the Obama administration has called the world's most important. Besides the recurrence of the Dalai Lama visit, the United States recently announced a $6.4 billion arms sale to Taiwan, the self-governing democratic island that Beijing claims as its own.

Gyari said that while the Dalai Lama does not care where he meets the president, the symbolism of the location is very important to other Tibetans and to human rights activists in the United States and elsewhere. Gyari said he has always been puzzled by U.S. presidents not meeting with the Dalai Lama in the Oval Office.

Former President George W. Bush appeared at the public presentation in 2007 of a Congressional Gold Medal Award to the Dalai Lama, but presidential meetings with the monk typically have been held away from reporters, often in the White House's private residences.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters Tuesday that he did not know whether Obama and the Dalai Lama would make a televised appearance after their meeting.

Obama received heavy criticism when he did not meet with the Dalai Lama when the monk came to Washington in October. Gyari called that decision a "setback" and said it hurt Tibetans, who expect the Dalai Lama to meet with the president when he visits Washington.

Gyari said that smaller countries also could point to the decision as a precedent for bowing to pressure by China to scrap meetings with the Dalai Lama. The White House said no meeting was scheduled with the Dalai Lama in October so that Obama could better raise Tibet issues in a November summit with Chinese President Hu Jintao.

Gyari said his high-level talks with Chinese officials last month on Tibetan efforts to gain greater autonomy produced no results. He warned that the Dalai Lama is China's best chance for gaining legitimacy for its rule in Tibet and said Beijing must stop insulting the Dalai Lama and treating Tibetans as second-class citizens.

He said China's angry reaction to Thursday's meeting is a sign of worrisome arrogance and chauvinism in Beijing.

China maintains that Tibet has been part of its territory for centuries, but many Tibetans say the region was functionally independent for much of its history.

WASHINGTON - AP[Wednesday, February 17, 2010 21:13]
Foster Klug,

U.S. President Barack Obama still plans to meet the Dalai Lama, the White House said on Tuesday, despite China's warning that such a meeting would hurt ties already strained by U.S. weapons sales to Taiwan.

Digging in on two points of discord, China vowed to impose unspecified sanctions against U.S. companies selling arms to Taiwan and said any meeting between Obama and the exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader would hurt bilateral ties.

The White House shrugged off Beijing's warning.

"The president told China's leaders during his trip last year that he would meet with the Dalai Lama and he intends to do so," White House spokesman Bill Burton told reporters traveling with Obama to New Hampshire.

"We expect that our relationship with China is mature enough where we can work on areas of mutual concern such as climate, the global economy and non-proliferation and discuss frankly and candidly those areas where we disagree."

China has become increasingly vocal in opposing meetings between foreign leaders and the Dalai Lama, who Beijing deems a dangerous separatist. A meeting between the Tibetan leader and Obama would raise tensions between the world's biggest and third-biggest economies.

Ties between the United States and China have also soured over trade and currency quarrels, cyber security and control of the Internet, and Beijing's jailing of dissidents.

U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Washington wanted to "work through" disputes in various bilateral meetings the United States has with China.

"You have two of the most powerful nations on earth and our interests coincide in many areas and our interests collide occasionally in a handful of those," he told reporters.

A senior Democratic senator said on Tuesday he had asked 30 U.S. companies, including Apple, Facebook and Skype, for information on their human rights practices in China in the aftermath of Google's decision to no longer cooperate with Chinese Internet censorship efforts.

"Google sets a strong example in standing up to the Chinese government's continued failure to respect the fundamental human rights of free expression and privacy," Assistant Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin said.

Google, the world's top Internet search engine, said last month it would not abide by Beijing-mandated censorship of its Chinese-language search engine and might quit the Chinese market entirely because of cyber attacks from China.
Recent cyber attacks on Google were a "wake-up call" and neither the government nor the private sector can fully protect the U.S. infrastructure, Dennis Blair, director of national intelligence, said on Tuesday.
"Malicious cyber activity is occurring on an unprecedented scale with extraordinary sophistication," he said in written testimony for a Senate intelligence committee hearing.
"China's aggressive cyber activities" were among challenges posed by the Chinese military, Blair added.
'DAMAGE TRUST'
There had been expectations that Obama would meet the Dalai Lama as early as this month, when the Tibetan leader visits the United States. The White House has not announced a schedule.
Zhu Weiqun, a vice minister of the United Front Work Department of China's ruling Communist Party, said Beijing would vehemently oppose a meeting.

"If the U.S. leader chooses this time to meet the Dalai Lama, that would damage trust and cooperation between our two countries, and how would that help the United States surmount the current economic crisis?" said Zhu, whose department steers party policy over ethnic issues.
China routinely opposes meetings between the Dalai Lama and foreign leaders, especially after violent unrest spread across Tibetan areas in March 2008. Beijing blamed the Dalai Lama's "clique" for the turmoil, a charge he repeatedly rejected.

Previous U.S. presidents, including Obama's predecessor George W. Bush, have met the Dalai Lama, drawing angry words from Beijing but no substantive reprisals.

But when French President Nicolas Sarkozy would not pull out of meeting the Dalai Lama while his country held the rotating presidency of the European Union in late 2008, China hit back by canceling a summit with the EU.

The Dalai Lama has said he wants a high level of genuine autonomy for his homeland, which he fled in 1959. China says his demands amount to calling for outright independence.
China recently hosted talks with envoys of the Dalai Lama but they achieved little.
The United States says it accepts Tibet is a part of China but wants Beijing to sit down with the Dalai Lama to address their differences over the region's future.

TAIWAN ARMS SALES
Beijing is already irate over U.S. proposals last week to sell $6.4 billion of weapons to Taiwan, the island that China treats as an illegitimate breakaway province.
The United States switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979 but Washington remains Taiwan's biggest backer and is obliged by the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act to help in the island's defense.
Blair told the Senate intelligence hearing that China-Taiwan ties were now "relatively stable and positive" with progress on economic deals across the Taiwan Strait.
"Nevertheless, the military imbalance continues to grow, further underscoring the potential limits to cross-Strait progress," he said.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu on Tuesday repeated Beijing's threat to impose "corresponding sanctions" against U.S. companies that sell arms to Taiwan, saying the firms had "ignored China's opposition."
He offered no details on how China would impose sanctions.
Companies that could be affected by Chinese sanctions include Sikorsky Aircraft Corp, a unit of United Technologies Corp; Lockheed Martin Corp; Raytheon Co; and McDonnell Douglas, a unit of Boeing Co.
Bruce Lemkin, deputy under-secretary of the U.S. Air Force, said China had over-reacted to the arms sales.
"The U.S. has been consistent with our stated policy and we carry out those policies," he said. "So certainly we believe that China should continue to work with us on issues of mutual concern and to work with Taiwan."
China says the arms dispute will also damage cooperation with the United States over international issues. Washington has sought stronger Chinese support over several hotspots, chiefly the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea.
A former senior U.S. diplomat earlier told Reuters that China may not follow up strong words with strong measures.
"Let's watch what they do, not what they say, because sometimes tough words in China are a substitute for tough action," said Susan Shirk, a professor specializing in Chinese foreign policy at the University of California, San Diego.
(Additional reporting by Arshad Mohammed and Adam Entous in Washington, Steve Holland in New Hampshire, Simon Rabinovitch in Beijing and Nopporn Wong-Anan in Singapore; Writing byPaul Eckert; Editing by John O'Callaghan)

BEIJING/WASHINGTON (Reuters) -