WASHINGTON, Aug 8 (Reuter) - The White House, keen to avoid further strains with China, said on Tuesday President Bill Clinton had no immediate plan to meet the Dalai Lama when the exiled Tibetan leader visits Washington next month. A newly-announced U.S. tour by the Dalai Lama, spiritual and political leader of Tibet, puts Clinton on the spot at a time when he is trying to put soured U.S.-Chinese relations back on track.

China, which invaded Tibet in 1950, protested Clinton's two previous meetings with the Dalai Lama, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who heads a Tibetan government in exile in India. "At this time, there's no plans for a meeting," Calvin Mitchell, a White House spokesman, said of a possible Clinton-Dalai Lama session. "Maybe there will be a meeting, maybe there won't be."

"September is not an easy month, ever, here at the White House," he added, referring to the busy schedules of Clinton and his top aides after traditionally slow August. Despite the previous Clinton-Dalai Lama meetings and despite the Tibetan's visit to the George Bush White House, administration officials appear to be approaching the coming tour with kid gloves for fear of angering China by appearing to embrace the Dalai Lama's case against Beijing. A State Department spokeswoman said no request had been received yet for a meeting with department officials. She said the department would decide how to deal with such a request if and when it came.

The Dalai Lama fled in 1959 during Chinese repression of a Tibetan uprising. He accuses China of swamping his Himalayan homeland with Chinese settlers to overwhelm its traditional culture and turn ethnic Tibetans into a minority in their capital, Lhasa, and other areas of Tibet. Beijing accuses him of seeking to split the Chinese motherland. The Clinton administration has been working to repair harm to relations with China caused by the landmark June visit by the president of Taiwan, which Beijing regards as a renegade province.

Relations have also been hurt by China's imprisonment of a leading Chinese-American human rights activist, Harry Wu, and by concern over Chinese missile shipments to Pakistan in alleged breach of treaty obligations.

U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher has held out the possibility of a summit meeting between Clinton and Chinese President Jiang Zemin in the fall, possibly after the U.N. General Assembly session in October, to further a U.S. drive to improve relations.

The International Campaign for Tibet, a Washington-based human-rights group that is sponsoring the Dalai Lama's trip, said on Tuesday he would visit Atlanta, Houston, Boston and Washington in that order from September 4 to 14. "The purpose of this U.S. visit is to meet with key U.S. policy-makers, business leaders, students, Chinese residing in America and the public at large," the campaign said.

Sensitive to Chinese concerns, Clinton limited his last meeting with the Dalai Lama, on April 27, 1993, to what U.S. officials call a "drop-by." He was invited to the White House for a 50-minute session with Vice President Al Gore, which Clinton joined for a short time. At the time, an aide to the Dalai Lama said this marked the first time U.S. officials had let the Tibetan enter the White House through the front door.

Supporters of the Dalai Lama said they expected Clinton to welcome him again despite Chinese objections. They said any failure to do so would spark far worse domestic political headaches for Clinton, who campaigned in 1992 against "coddling the dictators in Beijing."