Rev. Danny Fisher

President Barack Obama meets with His Holiness the Dalai Lama in the Map Room of the White House, Feb. 18, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Speaking of Tibet and the Roosevelts, Kate Saunders, Communications Director for the International Campaign for Tibet, writes today for The Huffington Post about U.S. President Barack Obama’s gift to His Holiness the Dalai Lama during their recent visit in Washington.

When the Dalai Lama went to the White House last month, the media focused on China’s predictable outrage at President Obama’s guest. Others were disturbed by images of garbage sacks that the White House had failed to remove near the exit where the exiled Tibetan leader emerged to meet the press. But few noticed the significance of a gift that President Obama gave to the Dalai Lama — telling the story of a relationship forged between the US and the Dalai Lama before Beijing asserted control over Tibet.

President Obama’s present was an elegantly-bound exchange of letters between Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman and the young Dalai Lama, who was then the spiritual and temporal leader of Tibet prior to the Chinese takeover — when Tibet was effectively independent. This symbolic expression of de facto state to state communication is an important counter-point to China’s increasingly aggressive assertions of its ownership of Tibet over hundreds of years, not to mention its belligerent rhetoric about the Dalai Lama.

Read the rest here.