US President Barack Obama has pledged support for the Dalai Lama but will not meet him during his upcoming visit to Washington, taking his own "Middle Way" and outraging some Tibet activists.

A White House delegation including Valerie Jarrett, Obama's close Chicago friend and advisor, met on Monday with Tibet's spiritual leader in his home in the northern Indian hill station of Dharamshala.

Mike Hammer, spokesperson for the White House's National Security Council, said that Jarrett conveyed Obama's "respect" for the Nobel Peace laureate who has spent 50 years in exile.

"Tibetan religion and culture have made significant contributions to the world and the president wished Ms Jarrett through her visit to honour them," Hammer said.

He said the Dalai Lama told the delegation of his pacifist "Middle Way" approach of seeking a future for Tibet within China, which sent troops into the Himalayan territory in 1950.

"We think his views deserve our attention and that of the Chinese government," Hammer said.

He did not comment on whether Obama would meet with the Dalai Lama when he visits Washington next month on his latest tour of North America.

But the Dalai Lama, in a statement released by his office, said that he "looks forward to meeting with President Obama after (Obama's) visit to China," which is not scheduled until November.

China ? now the biggest holder of the ballooning US debt ? has been using its growing global clout to pressure nations not to meet with the Buddhist leader, accusing him of being a separatist.

Some activists voiced dismay at the symbolism of the Dalai Lama visiting Washington without meeting Obama. The Tibetan spiritual leader has met with every US president since then-president George H. W. Bush in 1991.

"If Obama somehow shrugs off this meeting, it gives a very clear indication to China that the US is bending down," said Tsering Palden, president of the Tibetan Youth Congress activist group's branch in New York.

"It really gives the wrong signal. It says the US is not ready to stand up to China," he said.

"Tibetans have been waiting so much for this meeting, so that President Obama can take the message of Tibetans to China," he said.

But Kate Saunders, spokesperson for the International Campaign for Tibet, which works closely with the Dalai Lama, said Obama would likely meet the Tibetan leader before the end of the year.

She said Obama, who met with the Dalai Lama as a senator, and Dharamshala made a "strategic" decision to wait until after Obama's first presidential trip to Beijing.

She said that the dispatch of the high-level delegation to Dharamshala ? which also included Maria Otero, the State Department's Tibet pointwoman ? was itself a signal to China.

"We know that President Obama wants to focus on real change and making real progress on the Tibet issue," Otero said.

"So I think that he sees this as a strategic opportunity to get some movement on the Tibet issue," she said.

The trip to Dharamshala came as the United States and China engaged in a rapidly escalating trade spat after Obama imposed punitive duties on tyre imports.

It marked the first major trade spat with China in the eight-month presidency of Obama, who has called for a broader relationship with the world's largest developing nation and largely enjoyed a positive reception in Beijing.

Elliot Sperling, an expert on Tibet at Indiana University, said that China "will certainly take note of the fact that Obama is treading carefully on the Dalai Lama."

"The Tibetans have been thoroughly accommodating. The Dalai Lama has given up most of the demands of the exile community for a country of their own and instead has vague demands for autonomy," he said.

"Basically they're in a position of weakness and the Chinese know it ? and they're playing it for everything they can."

China last year cancelled a major summit with the European Union after French President Nicolas Sarkozy met with the Dalai Lama. South Africa earlier this year refused to let the Tibetan leader visit at all.

But China recently took a nuanced tone when the Dalai Lama paid a religious mission to Taiwan, blaming forces opposed to Beijing's warming ties with the island.