BEIJING, Aug 9 (Reuter) - The top Chinese official in Tibet blamed unrest there on the Dalai Lama and ruled out compromise over independence for the Himalayan region, the Tibet Daily said in an edition seen in Beijing on Wednesday. "The main reason for instability in our region is separatist activities by the Dalai Lama clique," Chen Kuiyuan, Tibet's Communist Party chief, told a party congress that opened in Lhasa on July 29. Chen did not refer to specific incidents.

Tibet has been rocked by repeated, often violent demonstrations led by monks against Chinese rule since 1987. The July 30 edition of the Tibet Daily quoted Chen as saying independence for the region was out of the question. "On matters relating to the fundamental interests of the nation, there is no room for any compromise," Chen said.

The newspaper accused the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, of betraying Buddhism when he announced in May his confirmation of a six-year-old Tibetan boy as the 10th reincarnation of the Panchen Lama. The atheist Chinese government says it has the final say in the selection of the new Panchen Lama. The 9th Panchen Lama, the highest monk in the spiritual hierarchy of the deeply religious Himalayan region after the Dalai Lama, died in 1989 at the age of 50.

The newspaper quoted Chen as saying the Dalai Lama was not qualified to confirm the new Panchen Lama and that it was not a "purely religious problem" as the Dalai Lama said. "The essence of our struggle with the Dalai Lama clique is not whether to believe in religion or not to believe in religion... It is a question of safeguarding the unification of the motherland and opposing separatism," Chen said.

Tibetan Buddhists believe the spirits of their departed living Buddhas are reincarnated in a new-born child. While repeatedly denouncing the Dalai Lama, China has stopped short of writing off the boy as a fake because he was found in a Beijing-blessed search.

A search team of Tibetan abbots, officially sanctioned by Beijing, was led by Chadrel Rinpoche, chief abbot of the Tashilumpo temple in Xigaze that is the traditional home of the Dalai Lama. Tibetologists say the abbot was detained in the southwestern city of Chengdu on May 17, apparently for notifying the Dalai Lama of the identification of the new Panchen Lama. The Panchen Lama was a controversial figure, reviled by some Tibetans as a Chinese puppet but revered by many as a spiritual leader and supporter of better policies for the impoverished mountain region.

Beijing has been at loggerheads with the Dalai Lama since he fled into exile in India in 1959 with tens of thousands of followers after an abortive uprising against the Chinese.