TAIPEI, Aug 31, 2009 (AFP) - Leading members of Taiwan's ruling Kuomintang party have no plans to meet the Dalai Lama as the government seeks to limit damage to carefully nurtured ties with China, officials said Monday.

President Ma Ying-jeou, who met the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader during each of his two previous trips to the island, has no meeting scheduled this time around, his spokesman said.

"We have said before that there is no such an arrangement," Wang Yu-chi told AFP.

Vice President Vincent Siew, Premier Liu Chao-hsiuan, parliament speaker Wang Jin-pyng and Kuomintang (KMT) chairman Wu Poh-hsiung also had no plans to meet the Dalai Lama, according to officials.

The KMT, voted into power last year on a promise to improve relations with China, has emphasised that the trip is solely to comfort victims of Typhoon Morakot, which killed at least 571 people earlier this month.

The Dalai Lama - labelled by Beijing as a "separatist" seeking independence for his Himalayan homeland - also appeared keen to curb the political repercussions of his visit.

"I don't want to cause any inconvenience to anybody," he said in southern Taiwan Monday when asked if he hoped to meet with President Ma.

But Li Yafei, an official of China's Cabinet-level Taiwan Affairs Office, repeated a warning to the island when arriving here for a visit Monday, saying the Dalai Lama's visit would affect ties between the two sides.

"It certainly will have a negative influence," he told reporters, adding that China will "keep a close eye on further developments."

China has so far directed its anger mostly at Taiwan's pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which favours formal independence for the island from China and which invited the Dalai Lama.

Ma, under growing criticism over his handling of the typhoon, last week approved the visit of the Tibetan monk, sparking concern that Taipei may jeopardise its warming relations with China.

Beijing reacts angrily to any country hosting the Dalai Lama, and a trip to Taiwan is particularly sensitive.

Beijing has regarded the island as part of its territory awaiting reunification, by force if necessary, ever since it split from the mainland in 1949 after a civil war.