China howls but Dalai Lama draws crowd at human rights talk

China's U.N. mission in Geneva circulated a letter to other missions this week asking them to avoid the Tibetan spiritual leader's appearance at a conference built around Nobel peace prize winners and co-sponsored by the United States and Canada.

Hundreds of supporters of the Dalai Lama, some waving Tibetan flags, rallied at the giant three-legged chair landmark outside the U.N. complex as he attended the packed-house conference nearby at Geneva's Graduate Institute.

The conference was billed as a side event to the ongoing U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, where the U.S. and 11 other Western countries on Thursday expressed concerns about human rights in China, notably over the arrests of lawyers and activists in recent months, and "unexplained recent disappearances and apparent coerced returns" of Chinese citizens and foreigners to China.