China lashed out at the Dalai Lama's visit to a disputed border region in India on Tuesday, saying his trip to the area revealed the exiled Tibetan leader's separatist agenda.

In a now familiar tit-for-tat response, the revered Buddhist figure and Nobel Peace Prize winner defended his trip, saying it had been overly politicized by others.

The Dalai Lama has been holding prayer meetings and teaching sessions with adherents in the Himalayan town of Tawang, near the frontier with Chinese-controlled Tibet.

China has repeatedly criticized his weeklong visit to the northeastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which Beijing also claims as its territory.

The trip began Sunday after months of rising friction between India and China.

"We oppose the Dalai Lama's visit," China's ministry spokesman Qin Gang said at a regularly scheduled news conference.

The Dalai Lama's visit to the disputed area "fully reveals his essential nature of splitting the motherland, but his plot is doomed to failure," Qin said.

Qin also criticized India for having permitted the visit above China's objections.

In an interview with India's Times Now television news channel in Tawang, the Dalai Lama dismissed the criticism from Beijing.

"I'm simply a Buddhist monk and all my conduct where I go (is) basically nonpolitical," he said.

The Dalai Lama also recalled entering Tawang from Tibet following a harrowing escape from his palace in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa amid an abortive uprising against Chinese rule in 1959. Continued...