by Lorien Holland

BEIJING, Nov 14 (AFP) - China's top official in Tibet has launched a major religious crackdown in the troubled region after warning that officials have lost their way and were not following the party line.

Tibetan officials at every level have been floundering and taking no "concrete measures" against serious problems in the region, Tibet party secretary Chen Kuiyuan told an extraordinary meeting of the region's top leaders, according to reports reaching Beijing Thursday.

He told the 43 officials present that they must prepare to launch their final battle against the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, in order to resolve serious problems and said "all comrades must understand the strategic significance of the meeting."

"There are serious problems in Tibet...and we must establish our socialist ideology, morality and culture," Chen said, according to the November 5 edition of the Tibet Daily.

"China's spiritual civilisation is the key to making a strong attack against the Dalai clique and finally winning victory against them," he added.

The phrase "spiritual civilisation" was coined by President Jiang Zemin in October and has already been used as justification to crack down on the "backward" culture of China's Moslems in Tibet's neighbouring Xinjiang province.

Chen's speech came one day after the same newspaper published an editorial calling for large-scale reforms of the existing religious policy in Tibet, saying a lack of administrative control over Tibetan Buddhism in recent years had led to chaos in some areas.

"The struggle in spiritual circles is very sharp and complicated...and the main battle is to win against the Dalai clique," said an editorial accompanying Chen's speech.

"There are a lot of serious problems existing in our spiritual civilisation campaign and we must have a clear understanding that the splittist activities of the Dalai clique not only influence the world community but they also cause trouble and turmoil in Tibet," it added.

It blamed the Dalai Lama for putting the concept of Tibetan nationality above that of Chinese nationality in the minds of Tibetan people and said the "master of feudal Tibet" was working hard to restore his fiefdom.

A major schism erupted between Beijing and the Dalai Lama in May 1995 when the exiled leader unilaterally announced the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, Tibetan Buddhism's second highest figure, who remained loyal to Beijing after the Dalai Lama fled.

Beijing swiftly announced its own reincarnation but was shocked at the scale of support for the Dalai Lama's choice and the discovery of links between monks supposedly loyal to Beijing and their exiled leader.

In early 1996, all monasteries were ordered to remove photographs of the Dalai Lama, as Beijing launched a "patriotic education" campaign to stamp out all signs loyalty towards him.

But this only propelled the Dalai Lama into the international limelight and he has paid high-profile visits to Britain, France, New Zealand and Australia, much to China's chagrin.

China "liberated" Tibet from feudalism in 1951 and the Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959 after the start of a major crackdown on religion in the region, which was to last 20 years.

A major study published by Human Rights Watch/Asia and the Tibet Information Network in March claimed repression in Tibet had increased dramatically since 1994 and put the number of political prisoners in the region at more than 600.