Published by: World Tibet Network News Tuesday, January 13, 1998

PARIS, Jan 13 (AFP) - The French parliament's foreign affairs committee has invited Tibet's exilied spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, to address the body in the next few months, its chairman Jack Lang said Tuesday.

The announcement came the day before leading Chinese dissident Wei Jingsheng -- currently in Paris for a week-long visit -- was due to speak to the same committee.

Both events are sure to rankle Beijing, which has repeatedly warned foreign countries against any official contact with the Dalai Lama or other exiled dissidents.

The Dalai Lama last visited France in October 1996, when he was met at the National Assembly by a parliamentary committee on Tibetan problems and a Senate friendship group, but not allowed to enter the parliamentary debating chamber.

On that occasion, the French Foreign Ministry took pains to stress that his trip was purely "pastoral" in nature.