'Lankan President not meeting Dalai Lama in India'

Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena today rejected a report that he was planning to meet the Dalai Lama in India.

A local news report had claimed that Sirisena was to meet the Tibetan spiritual leader at a university function in Bihar.

"The President (Sirisena) has no immediate plans to visit India whatsoever," a statement from his office said.

Sri Lanka supports the 'One China' policy.

After Sirisena's victory in 2015, a group of Buddhist monks had invited the Dalai Lama to visit Sri Lanka, a Buddhist majority country, but the visit did not take place.

China views the Dalai Lama, a Nobel Peace laureate who fled into exile in India after a failed uprising against the Chinese rule in 1959, as a dangerous separatist.