JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AFP) — Fourteen Nobel Peace laureates yesterday urged South Africa to grant the Dalai Lama a visa, after Chinese complaints apparently scuppered a trip by the Tibetan spiritual leader to the “Rainbow Nation”.

The Dalai Lama was to attend a summit of Nobel peace prize winners in Cape Town next month, the first-ever meeting of its kind in Africa.

But, according to an aide, he cancelled after Pretoria denied him a visa in a bid to avoid angering China, which regards the Buddhist monk as a campaigner for Tibetan independence.

“We are deeply concerned about the damage that will be done to South Africa’s international image by a refusal — or failure — to grant him a visa yet again,” the group said in a letter to President Jacob Zuma.

Signatories include Poland’s Lech Walesa, Bangladeshi entrepreneur Muhammad Yunus, Iranian lawyer Shirin Ebadi, Liberian activist Leymah Gbowee and Northern Irish peacemakers David Trimble and John Hume.

The Dalai Lama has applied three times in the last five years to visit the country once led by Nelson Mandela.

Each time the government has dragged its feet until the trip was called off.

China — South Africa’s biggest single trading partner, with two-way trade worth $21 billion in 2012 — regularly uses its economic and political clout to put pressure on governments around the world to limit contact with the Dalai Lama.

The Nobel summit in Cape Town on October 13-15 is backed by foundations representing four South African peace laureates: Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, FW de Klerk and Albert Luthuli.

Along with the surviving South Africans –Tutu and de Klerk — the organisers say 13 individuals and eight organisations had confirmed that they would attend the summit, including former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev.

Previous summits have been held in cities including Rome, Paris, Chicago and Warsaw.