Published by: World Tibet Network News , Friday, June 13, 1997

BEIJING (Reuter) - China's restive Himalayan region of Tibet plans to issue rules on the selection of reincarnated buddhas in a move aimed at blocking the influence of exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, officials said Friday.

The new regulations would govern the search for and selection of young children considered to be the reincarnated souls of the _living buddhas" who reside in Tibet's temples and monasteries, said a religious affairs official.

The rules would help to combat the influence of the Dalai Lama, Beijing's greatest rival for Tibetan loyalties, the official said by telephone from Tibet.

The Communist Party-controlled Tibet Daily quoted a senior official of the regional People's Political Consultative Conference, an advisory body, as calling for faster efforts to stamp Beijing's authority on the ancient religious custom.

_We must speed up the formulation of rules concerning the reincarnation of living buddhas," it quoted conference Vice Chairman Lhamin Soinam Lhunzhub as saying in a speech. The speech was laced with hostile rhetoric aimed at those close to the Dalai Lama.

China regularly accuses the globetrotting exiled monk, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989 for his peaceful campaign for more Tibetan autonomy, of orchestrating pro-independence unrest in the remote and mountainous region.

State media have reported that Chinese courts jailed nearly 100 Tibetan separatists in 1996, including a group who organized protests, smashed up a police station and attacked officials.

The Dalai Lama's recognition of living buddhas found outside his homeland and the lack of any formal Chinese rules on reincarnation in Tibet had forced officials into action, the religious affairs official said.

_Because the Dalai Lama has recognized some living buddhas outside the region...if we do not take control of the task of recognizing (such reincarnations) it will have a negative effect on our work," he said, but declined to give details.

According to Tibetan Buddhist beliefs, the soul of a living buddha is reborn after his death and the resulting _soul boy" can be found through the interpretation of arcane signs.

Such children are then brought up in monasteries to take the place of the deceased cleric.

The official said the decision to issue the new rules had no connection to a bitter clash between China's atheist Communist leadership and the Dalai Lama over the search for the reincarnation of Tibet's second-holiest monk, the Panchen Lama.

The procedures governing reincarnated Panchen Lamas were very clear and would not be changed, the official said.

The Dalai Lama announced in May 1995 his recognition of a 6-year-old Tibetan boy, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, as the reincarnation of the 10th Panchen Lama, who died in 1989.

The move enraged Beijing, which appointed another 6-year-old boy as the official reincarnation and jailed a senior monk for colluding with the Dalai Lama in the search.