Berlin - In an interview, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has served notice on China that she would meet again with the Tibet spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, even as Beijing's criticism of him hardens.

Merkel did not say in the interview, to appear Sunday in the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, when she would meet with him, but defended her reception of him last September at her office in Berlin.

Her aides have said in the past she would not be in Berlin for any meeting when the Dalai Lama visits his followers in Germany next month.

The news magazine Der Spiegel said Saturday tension was growing over plans for him to meet the speaker of the lower house of the German parliament, Norbert Lammert, a Christian Democrat like Merkel.

Spiegel said Beijing had applied pressure on Lammert to cancel the meeting, bringing a hardening of German-Chinese relations.