(New Delhi) A group of American parliamentarians, including former Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, met the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government in exile in India on Wednesday, drawing criticism from Beijing.

The bipartisan group, led by Ms. Pelosi and Republican Congressman Michael McCaul, visited the 88-year-old Buddhist spiritual leader at his home in Dharamsala, northern India.

Meeting the Dalai Lama is “truly a blessing” and an “honor,” Ms. Pelosi said in a speech to a crowd of Tibetans and broadcast by the government-in-exile channel Tibet TV.

The US Congress recently adopted a text encouraging Beijing to resume talks, interrupted in 2010, with Tibetan leaders.

This text should be “signed soon” by US President Joe Biden, said Ms. Pelosi, according to whom it is “a message to the Chinese government to show them that our thinking and our understanding of the question of freedom of Tibet are clear”.

Beijing, which maintains that Tibet is part of its territory, denounced “external interference” and declared that issues relating to the Himalayan territory were “China’s internal affairs”.

“We urge the United States to fully recognize the anti-China separatist nature of the group” of the Dalai Lama, said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian, asking Joe Biden “not to sign ” the text.

The Chinese embassy in New Delhi also criticized the visit, saying the Dalai Lama is “not a mere religious figure, but a political exile engaged in anti-China separatist activities under the guise of religion.”

“We are the same human beings, we all have the same rights and this world belongs to humanity,” the Dalai Lama told US parliamentarians, dressed in a red tunic and draped in a yellow scarf.

He added in a video released by the Tibetan government in exile that “people all over the world should be peaceful and happy.”

China annexed Tibet in 1950. Many Tibetan exiles fear seeing Beijing appoint a successor to the Dalai Lama in order to ensure its total control over the Himalayan territory.

The Dalai Lama, who fled his country in 1959, ended his political powers in 2011 in favor of a democratically elected Tibetan government in exile.