BEIJING, Nov 12 (AFP) - Chinese President Jiang Zemin has called for speeding up the selection of the Panchen Lama's reincarnation, as a special group confirmed three final candidates and rejected the Dalai Lama's choice, Xinhua said Sunday.

In a meeting with the group, Jiang and other senior officials blamed the exiled Dalai Lama's "interference and sabotage" for holding up the selection of the reincarnation of Tibet' s second highest religious leader, calling for the child to be confirmed "at an early date," the agency said.

Some 75 members of the leading group for the selection of the 10th Panchen Lama's reincarnation, which includes Tibetan Lamas and officials, were holed up in a military guesthouse from Wednesday to Saturday to confirm the shortlist. The list is to be submitted to the State Council for deliberation before the ritual of drawing lots from a golden urn before the statue of Sakyamuni in Tibet is carried out and the choice is approved by the cabinet, Xinhua said.

Group members, whose meeting was given prominent coverage at the start of the national evening news, were quoted as criticizing the Dalai Lama, Tibet's highest spiritual leader, for interfering in the selection process.

They accused him of having "the vicious intention of disrupting Tibet's stability and undermining China's national unity through religious means," Xinhua said They were quoted as refusing to accept the six-year-old boy chosen by the Dalai raffia in May, saying he had been selected by "fraud" and that the key golden urn ritual and central government approval had not been observed.

Tibet's government-in-exile in India has denounced the Beijing-controlled search as a sham and accused the authorities of using coercion to suppress dissent among Tibetan religious figures.

"To all Tibetans, the boy recognised by the Dalai Lama is the sole legitimate reincarnation, no matter what methods the Chinese authorities may use to put a stamp of legitimacy to their present move," the Tibetan spiritual leader's special envoy in Washington, Lodi Gyari, said Friday.

Politburo standing Committee member Li Ruihuan said the leading group had "conducted the search in accordance with the religious rituals and historical convention," Xinhua reported.

The Dalai Lama's 'activities are entirely illegal and invalid, and have been opposed resolutely by people from the Tibetan Buddhist circles," said Li, who added that some 28 potential candidates had been located since the 10th Panchen Lama's death in 1989.

He accused the Dalai Lama of taking advantage of the reincarnation issue "to change the Panchen Lama's historical tradition of loving the motherland and religion, in order to serve his scheme to split the motherland and disrupt Tibet's stability."

The 10th Panchen Lama refused to join the Dalai Lama in exile following a failed 1989 uprising against Chinese rule in Tibet and was regarded by many Tibetans as a Beijing lackey.

Exiled Tibetans have voiced fears that the Chinese government will exert maximum control over the selected reincarnation to ensure he too toes the party line.

Xinhua did not name the final three candidates, but the government-in-exile has identified them as Gyaltsen Norbu and Tsering Wangdu, both from Nagchu, a nomadic area north of the Tibetan capital, and Ngawang Namdrol from Lhasa.

Li said the Dalai Lama has sought to disrupt the search on several occasions, thereby exposing "the reactionary nature of the Dalai clique." He called the religion leader "the chieftain of the splittists' political clique" and "a faithful tool of the international anti-Chinese forces."