World(REUTERS) Exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama said on Wednesday that he would visit U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, a meeting that would infuriate Beijing which views the Nobel Peace Prize-winning monk as a dangerous separatist. Speaking during a visit to Mongolian capital Ulaanbaatar and asked about the U.S. election, the Dalai Lama said he had always considered the United States a "leading nation of the free world". President Barack Obama met the Dalai Lama at the White House in June despite a warning by China that it would damage diplomatic relations, Obama's fourth White House meeting with the Dalai Lama in the past eight years. The Dalai Lama, speaking in English, brushed off some of the U.S. election campaign rhetoric. China regards the Dalai Lama as a separatist, though he says he merely seeks genuine autonomy for his Himalayan homeland Tibet, which Communist Chinese troops "peacefully liberated" in 1950.

Source: Sunday Times November 23, 2016 07:21 UTC