Dalai Lama Agrees To Attend National Prayer Breakfast

Dalai Lama Agrees To Attend National Prayer Breakfast
Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama greets the audience as he arrives to speak on "A Human Approach to World Peace" at Presidency College in Kolkata, India, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2015. (AP Photo/Bikas Das)
Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama greets the audience as he arrives to speak on "A Human Approach to World Peace" at Presidency College in Kolkata, India, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2015. (AP Photo/Bikas Das)

The Dalai Lama has agreed to attend the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 5, according to John Rizzo, communications director for Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey, who is co-chairing the event.

"He was invited by the organizers of the event, he has accepted, and my understanding is he plans to be there," Rizzo told The Huffington Post by phone.

HuffPost reached out to representatives of the Dalai Lama to confirm his attendance but have not yet received a response.

The president has historically attended and spoken at the National Prayer Breakfast, an annual Christian event held at the Washington Hilton. In keeping with tradition, President Barack Obama has also been invited to speak at the event, Rizzo said. The White House did not immediately respond to inquiries about the president's possible attendance.

If both leaders do attend, the breakfast would be their first public appearance together. The two have met in private three times, most recently in February of 2014. The White House has barred media from these meetings in an attempt to minimize publicity in apparent deference to the Chinese government.

Following the 2014 meeting, however, China's Foreign Ministry issued a statement stating that the U.S. had "gravely violated basic norms governing the international relations and seriously harmed the Sino-U.S. relations."

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