(CNSNews.com) - As the Bush administration's envoy on Tibet prepares to meet with the visiting Dalai Lama on Monday, a state-run Chinese newspaper has accused the State Department of colluding with others to orchestrate protests surrounding the Olympic torch relay.

Undersecretary for Democracy and Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky, who serves concurrently as special coordinator for Tibetan issues, is scheduled to hold talks with the exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

It will be the highest-level talks between the Dalai Lama and the U.S. government since anti-Chinese violence in Tibet in mid-March sparked a harsh clampdown by Chinese authorities. Beijing, which has occupied Tibet since 1951 and in 1965 declared it an "autonomous region" of China, says the planned meeting constitutes blatant interference in its internal affairs.

On Monday, the state-controlled China Daily published an article accusing the State Department of collaborating with the Tibetan government-in-exile and a German liberal organization, the Friedrich Naumann Foundation (FNF), in planning "high-profile actions along the route of the Olympic torch relay."

The global relay, currently making its way through South-East Asia, has been met by anti-Beijing protests in various cities, notably London, Paris, San Francisco and New Delhi. Although demonstrators are driven by a variety of rights-related issues, Tibet solidarity groups have not hidden the fact that they see the Beijing summer Olympics as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to draw international attention to their cause.

The protests around the torch relay have in turn triggered angry anti-Western counter-demonstrations by Chinese at home and abroad, amid a continuing campaign by the authorities and official media to defend China's control of Tibet and accuse the Dalai Lama of responsibility for the violence and of trying to sabotage the Olympics.

The China Daily article centered on a May 2007 conference in Brussels of international Tibet support groups, jointly organized by the FNF and the Tibetan government-in-exile. The paper said that Dobriansky was among "influential figures" present.

It implied that this showed that the Dalai Lama and his followers were not alone in trying to internationalize the Tibet issue - "and what those Western countries and the Dalai Lama have been working hard for is the 'independence of Tibet.'"

Although not attributed, the Chinese report appears to have been culled from one published earlier this month by german-foreign-policy.com, a Web site dealing with Germany and "compiled by a group of independent journalists and social scientists."

That report focused on the German foundation's involvement in the Brussels meeting, but also mentioned Dobriansky, whom it described as "one of the members of the neo-conservative inner circle in the Bush administration."

According to the FNF, 315 representatives from 56 countries attended the event in Brussels, where among other things "opportunities for highlighting the relevance of the unsolved Tibetan issue in light of the upcoming Olympic Games" were discussed.

As the administration's Tibet coordinator, Dobriansky is the government's point person on Tibet policy matters, including the promotion of human rights there and support for talks between Beijing and the Dalai Lama.

Since her appointment in 2001, Dobriansky had held 11 meetings so far with the Dalai Lama, according to State Department spokesman Tom Casey.

Administration policy regarding Tibet is that the region is part of the People's Republic of China, and that the U.S. goals are to promote dialogue between Beijing and the Dalai Lama, and to help Tibet's religious and cultural heritage.

Despite calls from various quarters for a boycott of the Olympics opening ceremony to protest China's policies, President Bush has said he plans to attend.

Both the Dalai Lama and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation have voiced opposition to a boycott of the Games.

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