(Agencies)
Updated: 2007-09-26 09:10

A Chinese grandmother arrived in New Zealand for an emotional reunion Tuesday with her 3-year-old granddaughter who became the center of international attention after being abandoned at an Australian train station.

New Zealand toddler Qian Xun Xue is held by her grandmother Liu Xiaoping after they were reunited in Auckland September 25, 2007. [Reuters]

Liu Xiaoping flew into Auckland from Hong Kong and officials whisked her from the airport for a meeting with the toddler, Qian Xun Xue, who returned to New Zealand on Monday from the southern Australian city of Melbourne where she was abandoned by her father 11 days ago.

"The little girl and her grandmother ... were reunited today," Associate Immigration Minister Clayton Cosgrove told reporters. "Obviously they are emotionally distressed, given the circumstances."

The girl's father, Nai Zin Xue, is the prime suspect in the murder of his wife and the girl's mother, Anan Liu, 27, and the kidnapping of his daughter after Liu's body was found stashed in the trunk of his car.

The case has been front-page news in both New Zealand and Australia. He is being sought after fleeing to the United States.

The child was flown to Auckland on Monday and placed in the care of Child, Youth and Family, New Zealand's Department of Welfare Services.

In a letter written before she left China, Liu Xiaoping said she would bring her murdered daughter "back home and let her peaceful soul rest in her homeland in China."

"I will adopt my lovely little granddaughter and take her with me as well. I want she grows up healthy in a safe and warm place that well protected by us," she wrote in the open letter received by New Zealand's Chinese Herald newspaper editor Jerry Yang.

While in New Zealand, the toddler's grandmother is expected to meet Qian Xun's half sister, Grace Xue, a daughter of Nai Zin Xue who also was abandoned by her father in Auckland several years ago.

Grace Xue, who has a 1-year-old son, has said that if Qian Xun's grandmother is a suitable guardian she will not seek custody of the child.

A warrant for Xue's arrest on murder and kidnap charges was sent last week by New Zealand police through Interpol to the US.

In Los Angeles, Tom Hession, chief of the regional US Marshals Service fugitive task force, said he presumed Xue was still in the area.

"This man is wanted for murder," he said. "The murder was violent. We consider him, based on our information, to be armed and dangerous."