The Chinese authorities today announced for the first time that they will not recognise the child who has been identified by the exiled Dalai Lama as the Panchen Lama, Tibetan's second most senior lama.

The statement commits Beijing to appointing a second child as Panchen Lama, setting it on a path of confrontation within Tibet and ruling out any hope of compromise. It also means that the child will remain a major security risk for the Chinese for the foreseeable future, since most Tibetans are likely to disregard today's decision.

Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, announced the decision this morning 12th November. It also broadcast an aggressive attack on the Dalai Lama, fuelling suspicions that the Chinese faced unexpected reluctance from lamas gathered for the last week in Beijing to approve Chinese demands.

Beijing is insisting that the search process must use an arcane Qing-dynasty lottery procedure called "shaking the Golden Urn", but today's statements gave no indication when or where this ritual will take place, giving rise to speculation that the Chinese are having difficulty finding lamas who will agree to carry out the complex seven-day ceremony.

For six months China has run a vigorous campaign against the Dalai Lama for publicly announcing in May that Gendun Choekyi Nyima, a 6 year old child from Nagchu in Northern Tibet, was the 11th Panchen Lama, but until today no Chinese source had directly challenged the Dalai Lama's identification of the reincarnation.

China claims that a 1792 agreement gives it the sole right to give final confirmation of such decisions, and until today could have chosen to confirm the Dalai Lama's decision. It lays great importance on the affair and said today for the first time that the use of the golden urn system "upholds the sovereignty of the central governemnt", indicating that it sees the procedure used in the search process as directly affecting its claim to Tibet.

Because the Communist Party does not believe in the religious process involved, its leaders have avoided intervening in the affair directly, and its decision to over-rule the Dalai Lama appears to have been pushed through the meeting by lamas from Tashilhunpo monastery in Shigatse, Tibet's second city. These lamas lack popular authority, however, as they were installed in a putsch at the monastery this July following the arrest of at least 2 senior lamas and 24 monks from the monastery, the traditional seat of the Panchen Lamas, after opposing China's intervention in the search process.

"Senior Lamas at Zhaxi Lhunbo Lamasery [Tashilhunpo Monastery] said that ... they would not recognize the reincarnated boy for Panchen Lama chosen by the Dalai Lama," said Xinhua this morning, without citing other lamas at the meeting. The statement, attributed to the new Tashilhunpo faction, accused the Dalai Lama of using "fraud" to select the child he identified and added that the child failed "to meet the conditions".

It did not say what the conditions were but in a key statement Li Ruihuan, member of the Politburo Standing Committee, today accused the Dalai Lama of adding the child's name "illegally" to the list of candidates after it had been completed, suggesting that the child has been rejected on the grounds that he was discovered later than the other 28 children on the original list.

The meeting in Beijing, which finished yesterday 11th November, as reported by the Tibet exile Government, was acknowledged officially for the first time in the statements today. It was described as the "third meeting of the Leading Group Locating the Reincarnated Child for the Panchen Lama" with additional attendance by "members of its consulting group and representatives from the religious circles". Its only published conclusion was that it "agreed to confirm the three candidates for the Panchen Lama chosen by the Zhaxi Lhunbo Lamasery".

- PRESSURE FROM PARTY LEADERS -

On Friday China threw its most powerful political figures into supporting the new Tashilhunpo faction, and the lamas at the meeting had their photographs taken with five of the seven members of the Standing Committee of the Politburo, including China's Party Secretary, one of China's top Generals and its leading industrialist, as well as two vice-Premiers, the head of the legal system, and China's propaganda chief.

Quite why China needed to field so many top Communist Party leaders at an inconclusive and supposedly religious meeting is unclear, but the speeches published today suggest that the Communist Party is placing the maximum pressure on the lamas to avoid any further delays.

The lamas were told by Party Secretary Jiang Zemin that the search "would be completed soon if they make persistent efforts", and Li Ruihuan said the choice had to be done "as soon as possible" and called for "efforts to complete the work ... at an early date".

Senior lamas involved in the search since it began in 1989 are believed to have already delayed the process for several years while they tried to work out a compromise solution between the Chinese demands and the Dalai Lama. Others are known to be still trying to avoid publicly going against their exile leader.

If Beijing wants to follow religious custom it cannot have the next stage, drawing lots from a Golden Urn, performed in Shigatse by Tashilhunpo lamas but will have to have the ceremony done in Lhasa by one of half a dozen high-ranking Tibetan lamas who traditionally acted as regents of Tibet when the Dalai Lama was too young to rule and who have to be "really knowledgeable", according to the 1792 text.

Only three of these Hotuktu lamas, as they are called, are still in Central Tibet - Retring Rimpoche, Tsomonling Rimpoche and Pagpalha Gelek Namgyal. The second was last heard of as a fisherman several decades ago and the third, renowned as a womaniser and gambler, is a largely secular figure whose son who is a convicted murderer and who is not likely to carry much conviction as a "really knowledgeable" religious practitioner.

There are at least two others of sufficient rank in eastern Tibet, but for unclear reasons this week's meeting appears to have excluded lamas outside central Tibet from the search process, thus greatly limiting Beijing's range of choice. Senior lamas in eastern Tibet were not invited to the meeting and had been told it was only a study session, according to reliable sources in the area.

- EARLIER PLOT "UNCOVERED" -

The statements issued today said for the first time that a "plot" to intervene in the selection process had been uncovered by the Chinese authorities involving "a few members of the Leading Group for Locating the Reincarnated Child" operating on behalf of the Dalai Lama and "hostile western forces".

This is the first indication that Chadrel Rimpoche, former abbot of Tashilhunpo, believed to have been in detention since May, was not the only lama involved in secretly communicating with the Dalai Lama about the search process, and suggests he is at risk of being tried.

The news agency Reuters today reported that the official paper Tibet Daily on 4th November, in an apparent reference to Chadrel Rimpoche, accused unnamed lamas at Tashilhunpo of colluding with the Dalai Lama by sending him names and pictures of the candidates located by the search team. The Chinese authorities told journalists on 21st August that Chadrel Rimpoche was in hospital undergoing treatment for an unspecified illness.

The Dalai Lama was described by Li Ruihuan today as "the chieftain of the splittists' political clique" and "a faithful tool of the international anti-Chinese forces".

"While begging for foreigners' backing, he has tried to stir up riots in TIbetan-inhabited ares in China", said Li in an unusually aggressive attack on the exile leader, and one of the first statements to suggest that there has been pro-independence unrest outside the Tibet Autonomous Region.

Li also revealed, without mentioning any names, that earlier this year Chadrel Rimpoche had tried to persuade the Chinese authorities there was no dispute over the choice of Gendun Choekyi Nyima as the Panchen Lama, and so no need to hold the Golden Urn ceremony. Li intimated that it had been the exposure of this "plot" and Beijing's decision to resume the search process which had led the Dalai Lama to announce pre-emptively the name of the child he had identified.

No indication was given as to the future prospects of Gendun Choekyi Nyima, the child recognised by the Dalai Lama and now rejected by the Chinese. Since May the boy is believed to have been kept with his family in a Beijing hotel, according to unconfirmed reports, and it seems unlikely that he will now be allowed to emerge in public.