TAIPEI, March 20 (Reuter) - President Lee Teng-hui said on Thursday that rival China was using an upcoming visit by exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama to attack Taiwan, but said the island would not be intimidated.

"The Chinese communists have repeatedly used the Dalai Lama's visit to attack us," Lee said in comments issued by the state-funded Central News Agency. "We should not be afraid of the Chinese communists' intimidation."

The Dalai Lama, who has lived in exile in India since the failure of an anti-Chinese uprising in his Himalayan homeland in 1959, was scheduled to arrive in Nationalist-ruled Taiwan on Saturday for a six-day visit.

Despite protests from the rival communist Chinese government in Beijing, President Lee, church-going Presbyterian, has expressed a desire to meet the Tibetan Buddhist god-king during his stay in Taiwan.

No such meeting has been announced by Lee's office.

Beijing has repeatedly attacked both Lee and the Dalai Lama as "splittists" who were struggling for the same goal independence from China for both Taiwan and Tibet.