BEIJING, Nov 8 (Reuter) - Tibetan lamas gathered in Beijing for final rites to identify the reincarnation of their second holiest lama have three final candidates after a child announced by the Dalai Lama was eliminated, Chinese sources said on Wednesday.

China has summoned about 75 senior lamas from the Himalayan region to Beijing and they began a meeting on Sunday at the military-owned Jingxi Guesthouse in Beijing to complete final ceremonies in the search for the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, the sources said.

The Beijing-approved rites will involve three final candidates, selected through an ancient and rigorous system of tests, said the sources with access to the meeting.

A six-year-old Tibetan boy, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, announced last May by Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, as the recipient of the spirit of the 10th Panchen Lama, who died in 1989, was not among the final three, they said. The child had been eliminated from the search and replaced with a boy from western Qinghai province, which borders Tibet and is an ethnically Tibetan region, they said.

"The Dalai Lama's arbitrary selection of a soul boy as the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama is null and void," Foreign Ministry spokesman Shen Guofang said on Tuesday. "(This) violated religious rules on the selection of a reincarnated soul boy," Shen said.

The sources said the ancient rituals to make the final selection of the reincarnation were expected to be completed before President and Communist Party chief Jiang Zemin leaves for an official visit to South Korea next Monday so that he could receive the lamas.

The Dalai Lama's move enraged China, provoking a stream of abuse against the exiled god-king, whom it accused of using the move to try to split Tibet from China.

China maintains it has final say over the appointment of senior lamas under terms of a 1792 Qing dynasty agreement, and says it must approve both the Dalai and Panchen lamas.

Last May, the leader of a team searching for the Panchen Lama's reincarnation vanished, apparently into state custody. Tibetologists said Chadrel Rinpoche was detained in the southwestern city of Chengdu on May 17. He was reported to have been detained on suspicion of notifying the Dalai Lama that his search team had identified the reincarnation. Chinese officials have said he was undergoing medical treatment. In September, Chadrel Rinpoche was formally removed as head of the committee that runs the Tashilunpo monastery in the Tibetan town of Xigaze. The monastery is the Panchen Lama's seat.

Beijing has regularly accused the exiled god-king Dalai Lama of trying to split China and of fomenting an independence movement in the region since he fled into exile after an abortive uprising in 1959.