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.