Tibet's exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama arrived in Milan on Wednesday for a ten-day stay in Italy marked by considerable political uncertainty.
The 72-year-old landed at Milan's Malpensa airport and travelled straight to the hotel he is staying at for a day of reclusion and prayer.
He is scheduled to spend four days in Milan, where he will celebrate the anniversary of his Nobel peace prize along with other laureates, before travelling to the northeast city of Udine for two days, and then down to Rome.
Although the Dalai Lama will meet with some politicians while in Italy, the tone of his visit is in sharp contrast to the high-profile talks he has held elsewhere in recent months.
An expected meeting with Pope Benedict XVI failed to materialize, Premier Romano Prodi will be abroad when the Dalai Lama is in Rome, and public talks with Milan Mayor Letizia Moratti, a former minister, apparently fell through at the last minute.
MPs spent some time on Tuesday arguing over the best approach to adopt. Late in the afternoon, House Speaker Fausto Bertinotti announced the Dalai Lama would be invited to address the assembly while in the capital.
The premier will be in Lisbon for a European Union summit that day.
The lukewarm official welcome is largely the result of Chinese hostility to the Dalai Lama's visit, creating diplomatic difficulties for both Rome and the Vatican.
Beijing sees the Dalai Lama as a ''political plotter'' who aims to split the country. He does not recognise Chinese rule in Tibet and in 1989 won the Nobel peace prize for his non-violent opposition to it.
He has lived in exile in India since 1959, when he fled Tibet following a failed revolt against Chinese rule.
The Dalai Lama has embarked on a wave of high-level visits recently, meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, US President George W. Bush and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Speaking shortly after the Dalai Lama landed in Milan, the director of the Italian branch of Amnesty International, Paolo Pobbiati, criticized national politicians for their response to his visit.
''I'm really indignant at this to-ing and fro-ing of 'I'll meet him, I won't meet him' on the part of institutional representatives,'' said Pobbiati.
''This is all just because our government is scared of China's response''.
A Milan councillor with the centre-right National Alliance party, Gianfranco De Nicola, described the mayor's plans to meet the Dalai Lama in private only as amounting to ''a puerile sleight of hand'', to avoid Beijing's annoyance.
Meanwhile, a Hong Kong daily on Wednesday reported the pope had decided not to meet with the Tibetan spiritual leader in order to smooth the way for the ordination of the new bishop of Guangzhou.
The South China Morning Post wrote that Beijing had postponed the ordination ceremony for Giuseppe Gan Junqiu, originally planned for November, to see whether the pope would meet the Dalai Lama.
A visit by the Dalai Lama to the Vatican could create tensions just as relations between the Holy See and China seemed to be thawing.
The pope has called for greater dialogue with the officially atheist state, making it clear he wants to eventually restore full diplomatic ties with Beijing. Ties were severed in 1951, soon after the Communist Revolution.
This split makes every bishop's appointment a source of tension. The Vatican says it should have the final word, a situation that is unacceptable for the state-run Patriotic Association of Chinese Catholics.
The Dalai Lama was received by Pope Benedict in a low-profile visit to his summer residence outside Rome last year but a meeting in the Vatican would have had a much more official air.
