BEIJING, March 1 (AFP) - Premier Li Peng opened the new session of the country's parliament Saturday with a call for ethnic unity, four days after a series of Moslem separatist bomb attacks in the northwest region of Xinjiang killed seven and wounded 67.

Consolidating and developing ethnic unity "is the common aspiration in the fundamental interests of people of all nationalities in China," Li said.

"We should ... resolutely oppose any words or acts designed to split the country or damage ethnic unity."

More than 50 non-Han Chinese ethnic minorities account for just seven percent of China's population. But they are mainly concentrated in vast border areas, including Xinjiang, Tibet and inner Mongolia, which represent 50 percent of the country's territory.

Li also called for tougher state controls on religion, seen as a key element in separatist sentiment in both Buddhist Tibet and Moslem-majority Xinjiang.

"We should strengthen management of religious affairs according to law and help various religions adapt themselves to socialist society," he said.

Authorities in both regions have recently been imposing increasingly tight political control over religious and educational institutions.

Tibet's highest spritual leader, the Dalai Lama, has headed a Tibetan government-in-exile in India since fleeing China in 1959. He has been condemned by Beijing as a separatist and a western pawn.

Tuesday's bomb attacks in the Xinjiang capital of Urumqi were blamed on ethnic-Uighur Moslem separatists.

They followed a wave of anti-Chinese unrest three weeks earlier that officially left 10 people dead in the town of Yining, near the border with Kazakhstan. Other estimates have put the death toll closer to 70.