US President Barack Obama on Saturday received the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, for talks choreographed to be as low-key as possible, defying strident warnings from China.

Governments around the world on Saturday braced for the release of millions of potentially embarrassing US diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks as Washington raced to contain the fallout.

A former UN envoy appealed on Monday for action to stop Afgha-nistan’s parliamentary elections later this year, charging that President Hamid Karzai could trigger civil war through vote-rigging.