(3 Nov 2009) SHOTLIST
1. Wide of Jack Lang, French Envoy to North Korea being interviewed
2. SOUNDBITE: (French) Jack Lang, French Envoy to North Korea:
"The reason why President Sarkozy has asked me to go to Pyongyang after having visited the different nations affected by North Korea, is his interest in being better informed. So I'm going to try to take on this fact-finding mission with honesty and intellectual rigour. And as I am by the way and have always been a soldier of peace, I'm happy to be able to accomplish this mission for my country, for Europe and for peace."
3. Cutaway of Lang
4. SOUNDBITE: (French) Jack Lang, French Envoy to North Korea:
"My mission will consist of reporting to the President and the Foreign Minister upon my return - about my meetings, my impressions and to make a series of proposals and to ultimately suggest certain initiatives. This is a fact-finding mission which is totally open, no decisions have been made."
5. Cutaway of Lang
6. SOUNDBITE: (English) Jack Lang, French Envoy to North Korea:
"We will discuss but all the problems, the nuclear question naturally, but also what could be, in (terms of) which conditions our relations with this country (under which conditions we have relations with this country). The situation, relations between European Union and North Korea."
7. Cutaway of Lang
8. SOUNDBITE: (English) Jack Lang, French Envoy to North Korea:
"France is a member, a permanent member of the Security Council of the United Nations and there is no reason which can explain the complete absence of France in these discussions."
9. Top shot of Lang during interview
STORYLINE
France's top envoy on North Korean issues said on Monday that he was on a mission to reach out to North Korea in order to re-shape Pyongyang's relationship with the European Union.
Relations between France and North Korea are officially nonexistent, with communist North Korea regularly pressured by the French government to abandon its nuclear program and improve its human rights record.
However, by dispatching former government minister Jack Lang on a special mission, French President Nicholas Sarkozy is homing in on another problem long seen as Washington's to solve: North Korea's nuclear program.
"We will discuss but all the problems, the nuclear question naturally, but also what could be, in which conditions our relations with this country (under which conditions we have relations with this country). The situation, relations between European Union and North Korea," Lang said in an interview with AP Television on Monday.
By sending Lang to Pyongyang next week, Sarkozy wants to bring new ideas to a stale standoff, among them is a possible European aid to North Korea in exchange for nuclear guarantees, according to Lang.
"My mission will consist of reporting to the President and the Foreign Minister upon my return - about my meetings, my impressions, and to make a series of proposals and to ultimately suggest certain initiatives. This is a fact-finding mission," he said.
On Tuesday, a day after Lang's comments, North Korea said that it has completed reprocessing thousands of spent nuclear fuel rods to extract plutonium to bolster its atomic stockpile, raising the stakes in an apparent effort to get the US into direct negotiations.
The North's official Korean Central News Agency said in a dispatch that the country finished reprocessing eight-thousand spent fuel rods, which experts say yields enough plutonium for at least one atomic bomb.
The North is believed to already be in possession of enough plutonium to make at least half a dozen nuclear weapons.
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