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Chen to Beijing: Keep the pandas
(Reuters)
Updated: 2006-03-24 11:48
Taiwan leader Chen Shui-bian told Chinese mainland on Thursday to drop
the idea of giving the island a goodwill gift of a pair of pandas, saying they
would not be happy.
Two pandas play at
the China Giant Panda Research Centre in Wolong, Southwest China's Sichuan
Province in this undated photo. The pair has been chosen as a goodwill
gift to the Taiwan compatriots, the State Forestry Administration said
Friday. [Xinhua] |
"A-bian sincerely urges the
mainland to leave the giant pandas in their natural habitat, because pandas
brought up in cages or given as gifts will not be happy," Chen wrote in a weekly
electronic newsletter, using his nickname.
The mainland has offered pandas to Taiwan several times in the past as
goodwill gift, but the island has always turned them down, in part because it
says its climate is unsuitable.
The giant panda is one of the world's most endangered species and is found
only in the Chinese mainland. An estimated 1,000 live in the southwestern
province of Sichuan and in Shaanxi and Gansu provinces in the northwest.
The panda offer was made at the end of a historic visit to the mainland by
Lien Chan, who heads Taiwan's Kuomintang, or Nationalist
Party.
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