BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese police arrested nine Buddhist monks suspected of bombing a government building in Tibet, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Saturday.

China has accused Tibetan groups of planning suicide attacks following last month’s riots and protests, but this appeared to be the first report of a bomb attack during the unrest.

President Hu Jintao said earlier on Saturday that the Dalai Lama was trying to “split the motherland” through violence -- an accusation the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader has repeatedly denied in the past.

Xinhua said the bombing of the government building occurred on March 23, but did not say whether it had caused any damage or deaths.

Nine monks from the Tongxia Monastery in Gyanbe Township in Tibet had confessed to the crime, Xinhua added.

“Cewang Yexe, one of the suspects, brought a homemade bomb with a motorcycle to the site and moved it into the office building with the help of others,” it reported. “They detonated the bomb and ran away.”

China announced earlier this month that police had seized guns, bullets and explosives in some Tibetan Buddhist monasteries. But violence reported until now had come during rioting, when protesters torched shops in Tibet’s regional capital Lhasa and pelted security forces with stones.

The Dalai Lama has rejected claims that he orchestrated the deadly rioting in Lhasa and subsequent protests across Tibetan areas. He has spoken against the use of violence and asked China for talks about the problems in Tibet.

Chinese officials have said that groups campaigning for independence in Tibet have joined Muslim Uighurs fighting for an independent “East Turkestan” in Xinjiang, northwest China.

A mainland-backed paper in Hong Kong reported this week that Tibetan and Uighur forces were also collaborating with al Qaeda to target the Olympic Games in Beijing in August.

Human rights groups have said Beijing is using perceived terror threats, denied by exile Uighur and Tibetan groups, to justify tougher controls in these restive regions.

Also detained in the crackdown in Tibetan areas were some of the young monks who interrupted a state-sponsored media tour in western China this week to yell they had no human rights, the U.S.-based International Campaign for Tibet said on Saturday.

Although local officials and trip organizers made no attempt to break up the demonstration, reporters at the monastery saw security forces taking photos of the monks.

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NATIONAL UNITY

President Hu depicted the Tibet troubles as a threat to Chinese unity in a meeting earlier on Saturday with visiting Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. “Our conflict with the Dalai clique is not an ethnic problem, not a religious problem, nor a human rights problem,” Hu said. “It is a problem of either preserving national unity or splitting the motherland.”

Hu also reiterated China’s position that it was open to talks with the Dalai Lama, but that the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader was blocking the way by trying to “split the motherland”, “incite violence” and “ruin the Beijing Olympics”.

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The Dalai Lama, asked on Friday night on U.S. television station NBC what message he would like to give China, said: “We are not against you. And I’m not seeking separation.”

China has bared its teeth at foreign critics who have demanded a softer stance towards the Dalai Lama, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

On Friday Beijing denounced a European Parliament call to consider boycotting the opening ceremonies of the Summer Olympics, having earlier condemned a resolution by U.S. lawmakers that urged an end to the crackdown in Tibet.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said the European parliamentarians had “rudely interfered in China’s internal affairs”, “seriously hurt the feelings of the Chinese people” and “confounded black and white”, Xinhua reported.

“The European Parliament turned a blind eye to facts. It did not condemn the Dalai clique who masterminded and organized the violent crimes,” she said.

Against this background of growing friction, President Hu used his address at the Boao Forum to try to reassure world politicians and business leaders at the annual meeting on the southern Chinese island of Hainan.

“Reform and opening-up are what have made China’s fast development possible in the last 30 uears, and they also hold the key to China’s future development,” he said.