Baku, June 2 (AZERTAC). A meeting of the News Agencies World Council (NACO) hosted by AZERTAC has today been held at the Four Seasons Hotel in Baku.

The meeting was a preparatory event for the 5th News Agencies World Congress (NAWC) to be hosted by AZERTAC in 2016.

The meeting was attended by heads and representatives of the world`s leading news alliances and organizations. The participants included president of the News Agencies World Congress, president of Saudi Press Agency Abdullah Bin Fahd Al-Hussein, president of the Organization of Asia-Pacific News Agencies, Director General of ITAR-TASS Sergey Mikhaylov, president of the European Alliance of News Agencies, CEO of Austrian news agency APA Peter Kropsch, Secretary General of the News Agencies World Congress Uffe Riis Sorensen, Secretary General of the Federation of Arab News Agencies Farid Ayar, Secretary General of the European Alliance of News Agencies Erik Nylen, CEO of Press Association Clive Marshall, Director General of Turkey`s Anadolu news agency Kemal Ozturk, Institutional Communications Development Manager at Argentine TELAM agency Juan Manuel Fonrouge, Managing Director for International & Business Affairs at the Korean Yonhap News Agency Oh Jae-seok, and others.

Opening the event, Secretary General of the News Agencies World Congress Uffe Riis Sorensen said that the Congress was founded by ITAR-TASS in Moscow in 2004.

The News Agencies World Congress was previously held in Estepona, Spain in 2007, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 2010, and in Riyadh in 2013.

Uffe Riis Sorensen thanked Saudi Arabia for the excellent organization of the 4th News Agencies World Congress.

Addressing the meeting, AZERTAC Director General Aslan Aslanov said Baku would host the 5th News Agencies World Congress in 2016, saying it would see AZERTAC take over the presidency of the NAWC.

Mr. Aslanov provided an insight into the agenda of the meeting, proposing that they set a preliminary date of the 2016 Congress, define its composition, keynote speakers, and preliminary topics.

AZERTAC was chosen as the host of the 5th News Agencies World Congress and its president for the years 2016-2019 at the 4th Congress held in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, on November 20 last year. The Riyadh event was attended by heads of over 70 news agencies, OANA, EANA, FANA, IINA news alliances, Sky News Arabia, Los-Angeles Times, Guardian, BBC and famous MSN, Google, YAHOO internet corporations.

The NAWC was founded with the aim of ensuring and improving the members’ ability to perform as key operators in the fast growing diversity of the global media market

The objectives of the NAWC are to strengthen unbiased news reporting, support the principle of freedom of the press and contribute to the general understanding of the news background. The organization is working to inspire and support news agencies, sharing knowledge of the most modern and important developments in the media business.

It seeks to address the issues of digitization, social media and the development of alternative business models. The NAWC is working to protect original work from piracy and exploitation of news agencies' material through aggregators.

The News Agencies World Council is responsible, in collaboration with the hosting news agency, for the structure of, and the program for, the forthcoming Congress. At least two meetings of NACO are held between Congresses.

Board members of the NAWC are the current President, the two previous Presidents, the Secretary General and the Chairman of the organizing committee of the upcoming Congress. All news agencies are represented in the Council by their regional associations, currently FANA, EANA, OANA, ULAN and the Alliance of CIS Agencies.

The two agencies, AP and Thomson Reuters, not being member of a regional association, may represent themselves.