By Kevin Chen

TAIPEI, March 12, 1997 (Reuter) - Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui on Wednesday made public his desire to meet Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, despite likely protests from China.

Lee's spokesman, Stephen Chen, told Reuters the presidential office would try to arrange an encounter during the Dalai Lama's scheduled six-day visit to Taiwan beginning March 22.

"President Lee has expressed his interest to meet with the Dalai Lama but we have not determined the time, place or nature of the meeting," Chen said.

"We are currently trying to arrange such a meeting."

Such a meeting almost certainly would anger the communist government in China, which has warned Taiwan frequently in recent weeks not to fan separatist sentiment during the Dalai Lama's visit.

The Dalai Lama is regarded by Tibetan Buddhists as a god-king but by Beijing as a "splittist" seeking Tibet's independence from China.

Similarly, Beijing slams Lee as a "schemer" who secretly plots Taiwan's formal independence from China while paying lip service to eventual reunification with the mainland.

Taiwan and China split at the end of the civil war in 1949, when the defeated Nationalist government fled to exile on the island.

Until Wednesday, Lee's office had declined to comment on whether the president, a churchgoing Presbyterian, would meet the Dalai Lama, who has lived in exile in India since an abortive uprising against Chinese rule in 1959.

The Dalai Lama's Taiwan hosts, the private Buddhist Association of the Republic of China, had maintained that the visit would be purely religious with no official contacts.

The Dalai Lama, who won the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize for his non-violent campaign for autonomy in his Himalayan homeland, has described the Taiwan visit as "strictly spiritual."