Tibetan Buddhists, not China, should pick the next Dalai Lama: US official

By Arul Louis New York, Nov 18 : The US backs the right of the Tibetan Buddhists to select the next Dalai Lama and the Chinese Communist Party does not have the authority, according to a US official dealing with international religious matters.
“The United States is opposed to China picking the next Dalai Lama,” Samuel Brownback, the ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom said on Tuesday.
“They have no right to do that. They have no theological basis to do that,” he said.
The 85-year-old Dalai Lama is the 14th leader of Tibetan Buddhists and he fled the Chinese takeover of the Tibet to India and took refuge there.
Traditionally the Dalai Lama gives instructions on where to find the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, but the Chinese government has asserted that it has the right to determine who becomes the leader of the Tibetan Buddhists.
“We think that’s completely wrong of the Chinese Communist Party to assert that they have that right,” Brownback told reporters during a telephone briefing.