Poland's Walesa warns China over Dalai Lama row

(WARSAW) - Poland's former Solidarity leader and ex-president Lech Walesa on Friday slammed China for calling off a summit with the European Union in a spat over a meeting with the Dalai Lama.

"The world will not allow China to choose anyone's friends," Walesa told reporters.

"I think that that nation, and above all its leaders, need to think a little before playing the fool, and shouldn't pick our guests for us," he said ahead of a planned gathering in Poland with the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader.

China on Wednesday called off a summit with the European Union -- scheduled for next week in France, which holds the rotating EU presidency -- in protest over French President Nicolas Sarkozy's intention to meet the Dalai Lama.

Sarkozy is to see the Dalai Lama on December 6 in Walesa's home city, the Baltic port of Gdansk, on the sidelines of a ceremony marking the 25th anniversary of the Pole's Nobel Peace Prize.

"I'm warning China. Don't act like this because its leading to confrontation with the whole world," Walesa said.

"I love China. It's a country I like a lot. But if its leaders behave like this, sooner or later they are going to spark a confrontation."

Walesa, 65, invited the Dalai Lama and other fellow Nobel laureates to the ceremony, including former South African president F.W. de Klerk and Argentinian human rights activist Adolfo Perez Esquivel.

An electrician at Gdansk's shipyard, Walesa was catapulted into the global spotlight in 1980 after leading a strike against the then communist regime, spawning Solidarity, a free trade union and mass protest movement.

Walesa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 for leading Solidarity's non-violent campaign for freedom.

Under his leadership, Solidarity and Poland's communist government negotiated a bloodless end to the regime in 1989 and he was elected president the following year, serving until 1995.

He has since devoted much of his time to campaigning for democracy in other nations.