Australian Associated Press

CANBERRA, May 21 AAP - Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer will meet Tibetan religious leader the Dalai Lama later this year despite official protests from China.

China's Ambassador to Australia, Hua Junduo, said last week that any meeting between the government and the Dalai Lama would be "a very unpleasant episode in our relations".

But Mr Downer told Parliament today: "At the end of the day we make the judgments on the people we meet in Australia. Ambassadors don't make those judgments for us."

Mr Downer said he would meet the Dalai Lama on September 14 or 15, at the start of the religious leader's scheduled two-week visit.

Answering a question from Ricky Johnston (LP, WA), Mr Downer said he recognised that China had expressed its concerns about the visit publicly.

He said Australia's recognition of China since 1972 implicitly accepted that Tibet was part of China.

But Australian governments had also regarded the Dalai Lama as a person of great international significance and had held official meetings on his two previous visits in 1982 and 1992.

China has long resisted any official recognition of the Dalai Lama, regarding it as furthering the cause of Tibetan independence.