Russia has no problem with Dalai Lama's 'religious visit'

Russia is ready to allow the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama to come to the country on a "religious visit" to meet his followers, foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday.

Earlier, under pressure from Beijing, Moscow had been denying visa to the Dalai Lama, although he was allowed to visit the country twice in 1992 and 2003 after the Soviet collapse.

"There are no obstacles for Dalai Lama's visit to meet his followers in Russia. We are ready in future to consider the religious visit of Dalai Lama," Lavrov said addressing the Federation Council, upper house of Parliament.

He also denied that his ministry had issued any instructions banning the Russian Buddhist pilgrims from meeting their spiritual leader.

"We don't hinder Russian Buddhists' (meeting) with Dalai Lama," Lavrov said.

There are more than one million followers of the Dalai Lama in three Buddhists-dominated Russian regions, two of which, Buryatia and Tuva, are close to the border with China, while Kalmykia is the only Buddhist territory in Europe.

Under president Boris Yeltsin in 1992, the Dalai Lama had visited all the Buddhist regions, while after denying visa a year earlier, under the Chinese pressure, the then president Vladimir Putin had agreed for his visit to Kalmykia in 2003 on
purely religious mission.