Taktser Rinpoche, the pro-independence eldest brother of the Dalai Lama, has died in his US home, a family member and a Tibet advocacy group said. He was 86.

Taktser Rinpoche, who had been ill for several years, died in his home in Indiana, the Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet said in an e-mailed statement. A family member confirmed the death.

"Maybe it will serve to add serious urgency to calls for negotiations" between the Dalai Lama's envoys and China," said Robbie Barnett, a Tibet expert at Columbia University in New York.

China and envoys of the Dalai Lama last held talks in Beijing in July, after being delayed by three weeks in the wake of China's deadliest earthquake in three decades.

The next round could be held in China as early as October, two Chinese sources with knowledge of the slow-moving talks told Reuters.

"Taktser Rinpoche was deeply mistrustful of the Chinese Communist Party's intentions in Tibet," the International Campaign for Tibet said.

He called for the complete independence of Tibet as opposed to the "Middle Way" model of autonomy advocated by the Dalai Lama, who fled into exile in India in 1959 after an abortive uprising against Chinese rule.

Taktser Rinpoche, whose given name was Thupten Jigme Norbu, was recognised at the age of three as the reincarnated abbot of Kumbum monastery -- one of the most important in Tibetan Buddhism -- in Qinghai province.

He is survived by his wife Kunyang Norbu and three sons, the group said.