Pandas leave China on goodwill mission to Taiwan

A pair of pandas took off from China amid heavy security today on their long-awaited "goodwill" journey to a new home in Taiwan.

Hundreds of armed guards stood by as Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan were carefully loaded onto a special charter flight and the plane lifted off from Chengdu airport in Sichuan province for the three-hour flight.

The gift of the pandas is the symbol of the increasingly warm ties between the rival nations, and the importance of the trip to China was reflected in live state TV coverage of the event.

Beijing first offered the pandas to Taiwan in 2005 hoping they would strengthen Taiwanese public support for reuniting with the mainland. But the offer was rejected by the island's former leaders, who supported independence for the self-governed island.

Current Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou has tried to nurture closer ties with the mainland and accepted the pandas as a goodwill gesture, and they will be kept at Tapei Zoo.

More than 500 security guards and armed police kept watch at the airport as the pandas arrived for their historic trip. The cage holding the four-year-old animals had pictures of pandas painted on it, and similar pictures decorated the headrests and walls inside the EVA Air 747 plane.

"I wish them a happy life in Taiwan," the official Xinhua News Agency quoted tearful Ya'an panda keeper Qu Chunmao as saying before the two left.

The tight security underscores enduring political tension between China and rival Taiwan, with the self-ruled island's opposition warning that the pandas may be a communist propaganda ploy.

When linked, Tuan Tuan and Yuan Yuan mean "reunion" in Chinese.

Taiwan and China split amid civil war in 1949, and China has repeatedly warned that any Taiwanese moves to formalize its de facto independence could be met with war.