Yang Liwei, China's first astronaut, told a French official and a former astronaut Ms. Claudie Haignere, Friday, that he was pleased to join all his counterparts in the world in contributing to the mankind's great cause of peaceful development and utilization of outer space.

Yang spoke on the telephone with the French official, who was in Paris, with the assistance of an interpreter at the China Centenary Altar, in downtown Beijing, where an exhibition is being held on the country's first piloted space launch.

Ms. Haignere, a ministerial official in charge of research and new technology, had made two space tours, aboard Russia's "Peace" space station in 1996, and on the International Space Station in 2001.

She congratulated Yang on his "perfect" space flight and said that the successful manned space launch is a boost for China's status in the space industry. She expressed her hope that China would have female astronauts in the future as 16 European women have become astronauts.

China is sure to recruit women as astronauts in the future, Yang replied.

(Xinhua News Agency October 25, 2003)