The Dalai Lama, who is a revered Buddhist leader and a Nobel Peace Prize recipient, says his work in the northeastern Indian region is purely spiritual, as he held prayer meetings and classes with followers. The Chinese government, however, claims this work represents the Dalai’s Lama desire for a separatist movement in Tibet.

China’s condemnation of the Dalai Lama’s visit is just one act in a growing list of tensions between China and India, who have long fought over the area. Though China opposed the Dalai Lama’s visit to the area entirely, India allowed it, saying that the religious leader is a welcomed guest in India and may travel wherever he may choose. The Dalai Lama’s life in India has been a constant struggle between the two nations since the leader fled Tibet in the late 1950s and has lived in exile since then.

China Criticizes the Dalai Lama<

The prime minister’s remarks were interpreted as denouncing Afganistan’s President Hamid Karzai and suggesting that the president was willfully not choosing to improve the positioning of the government’s control over terrorist factions in Afganistan.

Such a charge of corruption against the president caused many of the Prime Minister’s own foes in his government of to criticize the prime minister of blustering and making threats that the prime minister could not in effect carry out without their support.

The Prime Minister’s speech to the Royal College of Defense Studies was given on November 6, to mixed reviews from other interested parties in the government and elsewhere.

Gordon Brown On Afghanistan