Published by World Tibet Network News - Tuesday - November 28, 1995

BEIJING (Reuter) - China has warned against sabotage by Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, and called for vigilance in an intensifying feud over the reincarnation of the Himalayan region's second holiest lama.

"The Dalai Lama has staked everything on a single throw on the soul boy reincarnation of the Panchen Lama and failed," said the Nov. 18 edition of the Tibet Daily, which was seen in Beijing on Monday. The newspaper was quoting Jiangcunluobu, a Tibetan and chairman of the Tibet autonomous region.

"But he will not resign himself (to failure) and will definitely use various means to engage in sabotage and create disturbances," Jiangcunluobu was quoted as telling a meeting of senior Communist Party members in Lhasa on Nov. 17.

"The struggle will become fiercer," the newspaper quoted Jiangcunluobu as saying.

China is expected to announce its choice of a new Panchen Lama soon. Chinese sources said supporters of the Dalai Lama may try to smuggle his choice, the young Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, to India, where the Dalai Lama fled into exile after an abortive uprising in 1959.

The Dalai Lama announced last May his recognition of the six-year-old Tibetan boy, as the recipient of the spirit of the 10th Panchen Lama, who died in 1989.

The officially atheist China was enraged, has rejected the boy and repeatedly attacked the Dalai Lama.

China maintains it has final say over the appointment of senior lamas, including the Dalai and Panchen lamas, under terms of a 1792 agreement with the last imperial dynasty.

A group of Tibetan lamas came up with three other candidates during a Nov. 8-11 meeting in Beijing.

Tibetan Buddhists believe that the soul of a living Buddha migrates to a boy born shortly after his death. The "soul boy" is identified through ancient and rigorous tests.

Jiangcunluobu, the second most senior official in Tibet after its Communist Party secretary, called for vigilance.

"We must heighten our vigilance and make good on preventive work," Jiangcunluobu was quoted as saying. "Whether we will be able to smoothly complete this work is a severe test for all party members and cadres.

"We must maintain a high degree of unanimity with the party central committee in ideology, politics and action. No noise will be allowed," he added.

The search for the reincarnation is near its end. Tens of thousands of yak-butter lamps have been lit at Jokhang lamasery in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa and other lamaseries, the official People's Daily said last week.

Lamas and the Tibetan people held sutra-chanting ceremonies to pray for the "early completion of this grand occasion of Buddhism," it said. The last of a series of tests involving the drawing of lots from a golden urn before a statue of Buddhism's founder Sakyamuni is expected to be held at the Jokhang lamasery soon.

The boy chosen by lot still needs a final stamp of approval from China's officially atheist central government.

The former head of the search team, Chadrel Rinpoche, was formally removed in September as leader of the committee that runs the Tashilunpo lamasery for informing the Dalai Lama about the progress of the search.

Chadrel Rinpoche has vanished, apparently into state custody. Tibetologists say he was detained in the southwestern city of Chengdu last May.