TEMPEST IN A GOLDEN URN

By ANTHONY SPAETH.

IN THE WEAK LIGHT OF DAWN ONE morning last week, hundreds of Buddhist monks gathered at the Jokhang temple in Lhasa to select a new Panchen Lama, the second highest religious leader in Tibet. Traditional yak-butter lamps glowed as three ivory markers were placed inside a golden urn. Each marker was inscribed with the name of a Tibetan boy identified, during a six-year search, as a possible incarnation of the 10th Panchen Lama, who died in 1989. The urn was turned several times, and then a senior monk withdrew a marker bearing the name of Gyaincain Norbu, 6, who was quickly ushered into the room in golden robes and a yellow silk hat. Norbu was hailed by the monks and by a man dressed incongruously in a Western-style suit: Luo Gan, a senior Chinese official dispatched to oversee the ceremony. Luo later bent forward, shook the boy's hand and said, "Love the country and study hard."

Norbu looked frightened, as well he should. With the turn of a golden urn and a handshake, he became a central figure in what promises to be a long and bitter war between Tibet and a communist government determined to retain control of the troublesome province, right up to choosing its top religious leaders. For six years, China had insisted on its authority to select the Panchen Lama. But in May, following ancient Tibetan custom and practices, the Dalai Lama announced that he had chosen six-year-old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima as the new Panchen Lama. Officials in Beijing were enraged, and soon thereafter, Nyima disappeared from his home village along with his parents, prompting accusations of a Chinese kidnapping. The communist government declared the Dalai Lama's choice invalid and proceeded with its own selection via the golden-urn method, which some Tibetans claim is used only when all other divinations fail.

China denies having abducted the Dalai Lama's golden child but has started a propaganda campaign against him, saying his family was "notorious among their neighbors" and the boy himself once drowned a dog, which the official Xinhua news agency proclaims is "a heinous crime in the eyes of the Buddha." Such assertions are unlikely to sway Tibetans to Beijing's choice.

By selecting its own Panchen Lama, China seeks not only to reassert its power over Tibet but also to control the education of the boy, who will one day lead the search for the new Dalai Lama, Tibet's God-King, when the current one passes on. From exile in India, the Dalai Lama reaffirmed his choice and insisted, "My recognition of the Panchen Lama's reincarnation cannot be changed." He may have been recalling the words of his own predecessor, who before his death in 1933 gave this warning: "Unless we guard our own country, it will now happen that the Dalai and Panchen Lamas, the Father and the Son, and all the revered holders of the Faith, will disappear and become nameless."

--By Anthony Spaeth. Reported by Meenakshi Ganguly/New Delhi and Mia Turner/Beijing

With reporting by MEENAKSHI GANGULY/NEW DELHI AND MIA TURNER/BEIJING