BEIJING – China accused the Dalai Lama yesterday of stirring religious conflicts in Tibet, pressing its criticisms of the exiled leader even amid sensitive negotiations on establishing a more permanent dialogue.

A report by the official Xinhua News Agency cited officials in Tibet as saying the Dalai Lama inspired an attack at a monastery last month by a group of Buddhist monks who smashed a pair of statues of a protective deity and brawled with worshippers.

“On a fundamental level, it was provoked by the Dalai clique, whose purpose is to arouse conflict between different sects of Tibetan Buddhism, thus sabotaging the unity of Tibet,” Xinhua quoted Lhasa’s mayor, Norbu Dunzhub, as saying.

The conflict revolves around a dispute over a Tibetan deity, Dorgje Shugden, whose worship has been criticized by the Dalai Lama as a divisive force in Tibetan Buddhism.

At least one of the statues destroyed in the attack at a key center of the Dalai Lama’s Gelug sect, the Ganden Monastery, was of Dorgje Shugden.

China has repeatedly labeled the Dalai Lama a separatist seeking to use his religious authority to gain independence for Tibet.

There was no immediate comment on China’s allegations from spokesmen for the Dalai Lama’s government in exile in the northern Indian town of Dharamsala.

Chinese communist troops occupied the Himalayan region in 1951. The Dalai Lama fled into exile in India following an abortive 1959 uprising against increasingly heavy-handed Chinese rule.

Xinhua said the Dalai Lama inspired the attack by ordering his followers to threaten monks worshipping Dorgje Shugden at Ganden and another key monastery, Sera.