By Mark Bendeich

MELBOURNE, Sept 16 (Reuter) - Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, urged Australia on Monday to press China into talks over the future of the remote Himalayan region and said he was ready to visit Beijing in the right "atmosphere."

Seen by Beijing as the leader of a pro-independence movement in Tibet, the Dalai Lama said he wanted to ask Australian Prime Minister John Howard to press China into opening a dialogue on the political future of Tibet.

"In case I have the opportunity of meeting (Howard), the main thing which I want to mention is...to appeal to the Australian government to help to materialise meaningful negotiations with the Chinese government," the Dalai Lama told a news conference in Melbourne.

A meeting with Howard, who returns from an overseas trip toward the end of the Dalai Lama's two-week trip, has yet to be arranged, but Howard has not ruled out talks despite warnings from Beijing against official contact with the Tibetan god king.

China has already chided New Zealand Prime Minister Jim Bolger for meeting the Dalai Lama in Wellington last week.

Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer met the Dalai Lama on his arrival in Sydney on Saturday night, but said later that the talks were unofficial.

The Dalai Lama, exiled from Tibet since 1959, told the news conference the prospects for negotiations with Beijing had faded since his emissary met China's paramount leader Deng Xiaoping in 1979, partly due to domestic politics and frosty Sino-U.S. relations.

"At the moment the Chinese government, their main concern is to simply show the world and also their own people they are a big nation... No-one can influence them," he said.

The Dalai Lama, who wants a form of regional autonomy for Tibet, suggested that Beijing's "one China-two systems" policy governing its takeover of Hong Kong next year, and its goal of reunification with Taiwan, could serve as a model for Tibet.

"All these things are the more humane way," he said, adding he was ready to visit Beijing. "As soon as some appropriate atmosphere develops, I am ready to visit China," he added.

The 1989 Nobel Peace Prize winner also accused China of continuing to detain his seven-year-old spiritual deputy, the Panchen Lama.

"My Panchen Lama in effect is the youngest political prisoner. Seven years old. How sad," he said of Tibet's second holiest monk, believed to be the reincarnation of the 10th Panchen Lama who died in Beijing in 1989.

"According to (my) information, he is somewhere near Beijing, as a prisoner under house arrest," the Dalai Lama said, adding that he feared for the boy's life.

China last month denied it was holding the boy but refused to recognise him as the 11th Panchen Lama. Beijing has instead installed its own new Panchen Lama, a boy of the same age.

"Tibetan Buddhist culture at the moment is facing a threat of extinction ...Whether intentionally or unintentionally, some kind of cultural genocide is taking place in our country," the Dalai Lama said.