BEIJING, Aug 27 (AFP) - China has accused the Dalai Lama of being "head of the separatists" and "an instrument of the west" in a new strategy designed to combat the influence of the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, a Tibetan newspaper received here Wednesday said.

The strategy involves intensifying attacks against the Dalai Lama among four groups: among party workers, in the monasteries, among peasants and shepherds and among the youth, the Tibet Daily said.

The focus on Communist Party members and cadres is "the centerpiece" of the strategy against the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, the newspaper said in a signed editorial.

The monasteries, which were the target of an ideological purging campaign last year, are still influenced by the Dalai Lama, the newspaper said.

"The clique of the Dalai Lama is using religion" and some monks have "fallen in the mud of separatism," said the editorial, written on August 18.

It is also important to work among farmers and shepherds as they make up 80 percent of the Tibetan population, the article said, noting the "fight against separatism" attached particular importance to educating this group.

"Education must make the farmers and shepherds understand that the Dalai Lama is the head of the separatist clique, the principal factor of instability in Tibet ... and a loyal instrument of hostile western forces which are trying to westernize and divide China," the daily said.

The fourth group youth must be subjected to "patriotic, Marxist and religious education to counteract the "poison" of the Dalai Lama's teachings, it said.

Chinese troops took control of Tibet in 1951. The Dalai Lama has been living in India since fleeing his homeland in 1959 following an abortive anti-Chinese revolt.

A European fact-finding mission earlier this month called the Himalayan region a de-facto colony run by Communist authorities in Beijing, a charged that was disputed by China's UN mission in Geneva, where the report was released.

A three-member team which spent five days in Tibet in late April concluded that the place fit the bill as a colonized society and urged Beijing to negotiate as early as possible genuine autonomy for the region.

"Marco Polo ... described Tibet in his writings as a province of China," Beijing's mission retaliated.

"I suspect that these people were not in Tibet on any fact-finding missions, but on missions for spreading their precooked fabrications in order to misguide the world opinion."