BEIJING - Sept 24(AP) -- China accused the U.S. government on Sunday of covertly supporting Tibetan independence, focusing on a meeting between President Clinton and the Dalai Lama.

The accusation, which came in an official Xinhua News Agency commentary, was the second time in four days that China criticized Clinton's Sept. 13 meeting with Tibet's exiled spiritual leader. "Covertly the U.S. government and the Congress have been backing the separatist activity of the Dalai Lama for a long time," Xinhua said in the editorial, which was carried in several major newspapers.

The editorial did not give details except to mention meetings of the Dalai Lama with Clinton and members of Congress. The United States briefly aided anti-Chinese Tibetan guerrillas in the late 1950s and the 1960s.

Xinhua's strident tone contrasts with tentative, but positive steps that China and the United States recently have taken to improve relations. Foreign Minister Qian Qichen is due to meet his U.S. counterpart, Warren Christopher, in New York this week to discuss a possible summit between Clinton and Chinese President Jiang Zemin. On Friday, after a three-month delay, China approved Clinton's choice of former Senator James Sasser as ambassador to Beijing. The appointment still needs Senate approval.

Xinhua accused the U.S. government of playing the "Tibet card" at a time when it should be trying to smooth over a summer-long dispute over Taiwan.

In May, Clinton let Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui attend his college reunion at Cornell University. The U.S. government severed official ties with Taiwan in 1979 as a condition for normalizing relations with China, which considers it a renegade province.

Xinhua said the visits to the United States by Lee and the Dalai Lama were part of a plan to confound China.

"On the questions of Taiwan and Tibet ... the U.S. administration has seldom meant what it said, often saying this today and otherwise tomorrow, proving perfidious and unfaithful," Xinhua said.

Support for Tibet, a remote Himalayan region, and for capitalist Taiwan runs deep among members of Congress upset with China's poor human rights record and ideologically at odds with its Communist government.

China claims it has ruled Tibet since the 13th century. Tibetans enjoyed de facto independence much of that time, and a separatist movement centered around the Buddhist clergy persists despite a 45-year Chinese military presence.