Agya Rinpoche, the abbot of Kumbum monastery in Qinghai province, is one of the highest level religious figures to leave since the Dalai Lama fled into exile in 1959.

The abbot appeared to have been angered by policies requiring ``patriotic education'' in Tibetan monasteries and convents and by the Chinese government's decision to overrule the Dalai Lama's choice for the Panchen Lama, the second most revered figure in Tibetan Buddhism, the Tibet information network said.

The London-based group said the Agya had declined to discuss his departure with the media and it remained unclear if he planned to seek asylum in the United States.

The management committee at Kumbum monastery, contacted by telephone, would only say the abbot was on a retreat.

The 48-year-old Agya has played a dual role as both a topspiritual figure and a government official. He is vice president of the Buddhist Association of China, vice president of the All-China Youth Federation and vice chairman of the Qinghai provincial committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, a key advisory body.

Those divided loyalties were likely strained to the extreme by the controversy over the selection of a boy to replace the Panchen Lama after his death in 1989.

Communist Party leaders forced Tibet's Buddhist clergy to reject a six-year-old named by the Dalai Lama and choose another child.

The Agya, a devotee of the previous Panchen Lama, appears to have resisted the Chinese government's efforts to install the seven-year-old boy chosen by Beijing in Kumbum monastery, the report by Tibet information network said.

The boy is now living in a compound in suburban Beijing instead of at Tashilhunpho monastery, the traditional seat of the Panchen Lamas in Shigatse, Tibet's second largest city, because of fears for his safety. Ithad been thought that because Kumbum is in Qinghai, an area also populated by ethnic Chinese and Muslims, he would be safer than in Tibet, the network said.