By Scott Hillis

BEIJING, Nov 16 (Reuter) - China's Communist Party has taken its crusade to resurrect socialist values to Tibet, with a call for textbooks and publications to stress the historical links between the restive Himalayan region and its Chinese rulers.

Delegates to a recent Communist Party meeting urged Tibet to embrace "spiritual civilisation," or socialist values, to uproot the influence of the region's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, the Tibet Daily said in an edition seen in Beijing on Saturday.

"Protecting the unity of the motherland and opposing the Dalai Lama's evil activities to split the motherland is a major task of building spiritual civilisation in our region," the November 6 edition of the official newspaper said.

"School textbooks, classrooms and various publications must strengthen (the) embodiment of the historical links between Tibet and the motherland," the newspaper said.

Beijing says Tibet has been a part of China for centuries but many Tibetans dispute this and have yearned for independence since Communist troops marched into the region in 1950.

"The mentality that Tibet is an inseparable part of the motherland must be firmly established throughout society," the Tibet Daily said.

The newspaper accused the Dalai Lama, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for his peaceful campaign for Tibetan autonomy, of disfiguring religion to paralyse his people and split the deeply-Buddhist region from the rest of China.

Tibet's most revered spiritual leader fled into exile in India in 1959 after a failed revolt against Chinese rule.

"Tibetan Buddhism has already been disfigured beyond recognition by the Dalai clique," the Tibet Daily said.

"The Dalai clique has employed every possible trick to use religion in vain attempts to split the motherland and paralyse the people," it said.

Greater efforts were needed to expose the "evil" acts of the Dalai Lama that were aimed at stirring up turmoil, it said.

Tibet has been rocked by repeated anti-Chinese protests that Beijing charges are stirred up by the Dalai Lama's supporters.

The newspaper warned that Tibetan culture and material life had been flooded by religious ideas and urged people to embrace socialist culture.

"Religion...cannot provide the impetus for development in Tibet and cannot provide any help to the Tibetan people in throwing off poverty and becoming prosperous," it said.

China has called for greater efforts to promote atheism in the deeply religious area, saying that religious beliefs are a hindrance to economic progress.

Beijing views international support for Tibet's holiest man as a Western plot to split China and contain its development.

China slammed as rude intereference in its internal affairs a meeting last month between the globe-trotting Buddhist monk and representatives of the European Parliament.

Beijing also threatened trade relatiation against Canberra after a meeting between the Dalai Lama and Australian Prime Minister John Howard in September.

REUTER