In a speech to about 600 party members in regional capital Lhasa on Friday, Zhang Qingli, Tibet's Communist Party secretary, said: "We must have a more vigorous will to fight, a more tenacious style and do a more solid job of uniting and leading the region's various ethnic groups and throw ourselves into the struggle against splittism".

"From beginning to end...we must deepen patriotic education at temples, comprehensively expose and denounce the Dalai Lama clique's political reactionary nature and the religious hypocrisy of the Dalai clique."

The Dalai Lama is accused of being a separatist.

"The (mandate of) heaven in Tibet will never change. The Dalai Lama clique's pipe dream (of independence) will never prevail ... the country's rivers and mountains will remain red," Zhang said in a speech carried by the online edition of Xinhua news agency.