By Jim Wolf

WASHINGTON, Sept 7 (Reuter) - State Department officials accused China Thursday of stepped-up religious persecution and other widespread human rights abuses in the uneasy Himalayan region of Tibet.

In remarks that could further strain U.S. ties with Beijing, the officials told Congress that China had suppressed open veneration of the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual and political leader who is to visit Washington next week.

"And such restrictions have become more stringent during the past year," Gare Smith, of the State Department's bureau for Democracy, Human Rights and Labour, told the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs.

Smith, a deputy assistant secretary of state-designate, faulted China for its dispute with the Dalai Lama over his recognition of a 6-year-old boy as the latest reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, the second most senior figure in Tibetan Buddhism.

He said the dispute "raised additional serious doubts about the Beijing government's commitment to respect" Tibetan religious practices.

China was surprised and angered by the Dalai Lama's announcement in May that he had found a successor for the Panchen Lama, who died in 1989. The government, which says it should have the final say, says the choice is "illegal and invalid."

Smith accused Beijing of continuing to carry out "widespread and often horrific human rights abuses," including torture, arbitrary arrest and jailing of Tibetan nationalists for peaceful dissent.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kent Wiedemann testified that Beijing was hampering Tibet's unique Buddhist traditions "by imposing limits on religious education and by limiting the size of the monastic community compared to traditional norms."

"These tactics are consistent with the tougher line Beijing has been taking" in the past year, he said.

He added that the United States has raised its concerns about Tibet "consistently and vigorously" in talks with China, as recently as during a fence-mending visit to Beijing last month by Under Secretary of State Peter Tarnoff.

Chinese troops entered Tibet in 1950. The Dalai Lama, whose title means "Ocean of Wisdom," fled to India in 1959 after Communist troops crushed a popular uprising. China accuses the Dalai Lama, winner of the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize, of seeking to stir anti-Chinese revolt.

The United States recognises what Beijing calls the Tibet Autonomous Region as part of China, a formula decried at the hearing by Lodi Gyari, the Dalai Lama's special envoy in Washington.

Gyari said the repeated public mention of this U.S. position tended to undercut self-determination prospects in the dialogue the Dalai Lama would like to resume with China.

In addition, Gyari faulted President Bill Clinton for what he described as timid White House meetings that did not "give dignity" to the Dalai Lama during his last two U.S. visits, in 1993 and 1994.

Tenzing Dhonyang, a Canadian of Tibetan origin, went through the 90-minute ceremony at a Tibetan Buddhist religious centre in the village of Pomaia, near Pisa.

Television film showed the boy playing with a photographer's camera from the throne he sat on and dropping a grain of rice from a bowl of rice he was given to eat.

Italian news agencies said the boy had been recognised by the Dalai Lama as the 23rd reincarnation of Gomo Rinpoche, a Lama from the early 11th century. The child's grandfather was the previous reincarnation.

Italian media have seized on parallels with director Bernardo Bertolucci's movie "Little Buddha," which tells of an American boy sought out as a reincarnation.

Italian television said Tenzing would remain at the Pomaia centre until next February with his mother and then go to a monastery in India alone for long years of spiritual study.