BEIJING, Sept 8 (AFP) - A campaign to "re-educate" Tibetan monks in the main monasteries of Lhasa is being expanded to include all monasteries in the Himalayan region, a human rights watchdog said Sunday.

The Tibet Information Network (TIN) also said that documents issued by the re-education teams confirmed that monks who showed a "bad attitude" during the campaign would be expelled from their respective monasteries.

The campaign, whose official objective is to educate monks in patriotism, aims to eradicate support for the Tibetan independence movement and focusses on a controversial demand that monks make a five-point declaration that includes an expression of direct opposition to the exiled Dalai Lama.

While foreign affairs bureau officials in Lhasa have denied that monks face expulsion, an official notice handed out to monks at Sera monastery and obtained by TIN, suggests otherwise.

"Those with a bad attitude to studying and those with poor results or deliberately causing obstacles to study will be severely criticised and their right to remain among the number of monks will be struck out," said the notice, dated July 15.

The document also stated that the campaign was "an important method in the next stage in fixing the numbers of the masses of monks in the monastery," and orders groups to be set up to decide which monks be allowed to stay.

A similar patriotic education campaign is under way in the neighbouring Moslem region of Xinjiang, where the authorities have reportedly rounded up hundreds of imams, Koranic scholars and students, as well as closed down several hundred underground Moslem schools.

The document handed out at Sera monastery orders the monks to study four re-education text books including one on "opposing splittism" to attend lectures and meetings and do one hour's homework each day.

'Splittism' is frequently used by the Chinese authorities to describe moves it views as aiming to split the country.

In a sign that the campaign has been extended throughout Tibet, TIN cited tourists as having seen re-education teams installed at Shalu monastery near Xigatse, Palden Choede monastery near Gyantse and Sakya monastery, all in central Tibet.

The teams are expected to stay three months in each monastery, where they will live for the duration of the campaign.

TIN also detailed the arrests of three monks at Sera in early July, including Ngawang Oeser, a monk in his 20s who was reportedly accused of possessing and distributing pro-independence literature.