BEIJING — China has branded Dalai Lama a “wolf in monk’s robes” and his followers the “scum of Buddhism.” It stepped up the rhetoric yesterday, accusing the Nobel Peace laureate and his supporters of planning suicide attacks.

The Tibetan government-in-exile denied the charge, and the Bush administration rushed to the Tibetan Buddhist leader’s defense, calling him “a man of peace.”

“There is absolutely no indication that he wants to do anything other than have a dialogue with China on how to discuss the serious issues there,” a State Department spokesman, Tom Casey, said.

A spokesman for China’s Ministry of Public Security, Wu Heping, said searches of monasteries in the Tibetan capital had turned up a cache of weapons. They included 176 guns, 13,013 bullets, 7,725 pounds of explosives, 19,000 sticks of dynamite, and 350 knives, he said.

“To our knowledge, the next plan of the Tibetan independence forces is to organize suicide squads to launch violent attacks,” Mr. Wu told a news conference. “They claimed that they fear neither bloodshed nor sacrifice.”

Mr. Wu provided no details or evidence. He used the term “gan si dui,” a rarely used phrase directly translated as “dare-to-die corps.” The official English version of his remarks translated the term as “suicide squads.”

Mr. Wu said police had arrested an individual who he claimed was an operative of the “Dalai Lama clique,” responsible for gathering intelligence and distributing pamphlets calling for an uprising.

The suspect said he used code words to communicate with his contacts, including “uncle” for the Dalai Lama and “skirts” for the Tibetan snow lion flag, Mr. Wu said. Beijing has repeatedly accused the Dalai Lama and his supporters of orchestrating violence in Lhasa. Protests, which began peacefully there on the March 10 anniversary of a 1959 uprising against Chinese rule, spiraled out of control four days later.

Chinese officials have put the death toll at 22, most of them Han Chinese; the government-in-exile says 140 Tibetans were killed.

China also says sympathy protests that spread to surrounding provinces are part of a campaign by the Dalai Lama to sabotage the Beijing Olympics and promote Tibetan independence.

The 72-year-old Dalai Lama has condemned the violence and denied any links to it, urging an independent international inquiry into the unrest.

“Tibetan exiles are 100% committed to nonviolence. There is no question of suicide attacks,” the prime minister of the government-in-exile in Dharmsala, India, Samdhong Rinpoche, said yesterday. “But we fear that Chinese might masquerade as Tibetans and plan such attacks to give bad publicity to Tibetans.”