BBC Radio

Chinese president Jiang Zemin has called for efforts to locate the reincarnated Panchen Lama to be speeded up. Xinhua news agency today said Jiang made the comments on Friday when he met members of the Leading Group for Locating the Reincarnation Child for the Panchen Lama. Jiang called on them to make "persistent efforts" to find the reincarnated Lama.

"In the past several years, under the leadership of the Party and the government, eminent monks and persons from the religious circles have worked hard and done a great deal of work in searching (for) the reincarnated boy," Jiang said.

He expressed the hope that they would make "even greater contributions to stability and development in Tibet".

Senior Communist Party officials Li Ruihuan told the official the Party Central Committee had attached "great importance to the search for the boy and dealt with the matter seriously".

"The Party's religious policy has been fully carried out and the religious rituals and procedures, as well as the established historical convention of Tibetan Buddhism, have been fully respected," Li said.

"The delay of the work is due primarily to the Dalai Clique's interference and sabotage," he was quoted as saying. "The struggle centring on the reincarnation is not accidental. It has exposed once again the reactionary nature of the Dalai Clique," Li said