Baku, September 3, AZERTAC

The official opening ceremony of the 43rd Executive Board Meeting of the Organization of Asia-Pacific News Agencies (OANA) has been held in the capital of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Tehran.

IRNA's Managing Director Seyyed Zia Hashemi, Iran’s Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Abbas Salehi, AZERTAC Chairman of the Board and OANA President Aslan Aslanov, and Director General of Bulgaria’s BTA news agency Maxim Minchev, who will be chairing the News Agencies World Congress in 2019-2022, made speeches at the meeting.

Then the Executive Board meeting began.

Director General Russia’s TASS news agency Sergey Mikhailov and first Deputy Director General Mikhail Gusman, Director General of Vietnam's VNA news agency Nguyen Duc Loi, Director General of Qatar's news agency QNA Youssef Ibrahim Al-Maliki as well as heads and representatives of Turkey's Anadolu, South Korea's Yonhap, China's Xinhua, Japan`s Kyodo, Mongolia`s Montsame, Indonesia's ANTARA and Malaysia's Bernama news agencies attended the event.

During the meeting, moderated by OANA’s Secretary General Vugar Seyidov, AZERTAC’s proposals on improvement of OANA's activities were discussed. Several news agencies expressed their confidence that these proposals would increase the effectiveness of OANA's activity and agreed to accept them.

Addressing the meeting, chief of the international relations department of Yonhap news agency Kim Jin-hyun mentioned that serious preparations are underway for the organization of the 17th OANA General Assembly to be held in Seoul on November 6-9, 2019.

The issue of IRNA's OANA presidency in 2022 was also discussed at the meeting. This initiative was approved by the Executive Board members and it was decided to submit the proposal to the OANA General Assembly for voting.

VNA’s Director General Nguyen Duc Loi said that the Vietnamese government proposes to hold the OANA Executive Board meeting in Hanoi on April 18-21, 2019.

During the meeting, Mongolia’s Montsame news agency expressed its intention to host the OANA Executive Board meeting in Ulan Bator in 2020. Turkey’s Anadolu Agency also expressed its interested in hosting the event.

Rabil Katanov

Special Correspondent