The 31st OANA Executive Board meeting (EMB) was held in Teheran, Iran on November 13-17,2009 and was attended by the Board members: ANTARA, AzerTAc, BERNAMA, IRNA, ITAR-TASS, KUNA, KYODO NEWS, VNA, XINHUA, ANADOLU and YONHAP. The meeting was also attended by special delegates from MONTSAME of Mongolia, TREND of Azerbaijan, AWAYE AFGHAN NEWS AGENCY (AVA) of Afghanistan.

Also present, at the opening session was: Iranian Minister for Culture Mohammad Hosseini.

Dr Ahmad Mukhlis Yusuf on his opening speech expressed his gratitude to the Mehr News Agency for the excellent arrangement of the 31st OANA Executive Board Meeting and the 25th Editorial and Technical Experts Group Meeting held in Tehran, the charming and historical capital city of Iran.

As the OANA President, he conveyed his appreciation to the Managing Director of Mehr News Agency, Mr. Parviz Esmaeili, for hosting this meeting. Mehr News Agency is a new member of the OANA community. Mehr is not yet 2 years joining the club but it has already given a significant contribution to the OANA by hosting the EBM.

Dr Ahmad Mukhlis Yusuf said that there were two issues sought by the OANA members. The first is to narrow the existing gaps experienced by each member countries. He said there were still many mis-understandings in several countries grouping in OANA, such as in Iran, Malaysia, Pakistan, India and Indonesia. And such mis-understandings should be turned into harmony. Accurate and more credible news stories are important to fight against the Western media domination. While the second is about the media branding: how each member of the OANA could play a role in branding in the respective nation.
The meeting agreed to give a deadline for the non-paying members of the OANA by March 31, 2010. The confirmation would be announced on the sidelines of the OANA Summit slated to be hosted by Yonhap of South Korea in April.
The catagories also agreed to put those non-paying members of the OANA into two, namely those which used to be active but now no longer active and those which are passive, namely in the news exchange, attending the OANA meeting and paying the annual fee.
Those which are on the first category would no longer be given access to the OANA Website, while those in the second category would get their OANA membership frozen.
The meeting agreed the phrase“A Quest For Global Media Balancing.” As the theme of the OANA’s 31st EBM and 25th ETGM
It was announced by the Yonhap delegation that there would be an OANA Summit in South Korea on April 21-24, 2010. Yonhap invites members of the OANA to attend the event.
It was reported that the OANA Secretariat has received letters from Iranian labour News Agency (ILNA) and TREND, an Azerbaijan’s News Agency ont the application for OANA membership.
The meeting agreed that the approval of the new membership would be discussed during the upcoming General Assemblyto be held in Istanbul by the Turkish News Agency of Anadolu. The tentative schedule would be November 24-28, 2010.
It was also agreed that the OANA Secretariat would send letters to these applicants with the copies sent to the news agencies from the same country to enable them to see both technical and financial conditions (of the applicant).
Concerning the application from ILNA, the meeting asked IRNA, Mehr and Far News Agencies to see the credibility of ILNA as the OANA’s statue does not state the number of News Agencies supporting the applicant.
It was also suggested by Mr Tahsin Ahti of the Anadolu to discuss the (ideal) number of member of OANA during the upcoming General Assembly in Istanbul held in November next year.
It was agreed that the Rapportoer General of the OANA’s 31st EBMand 25th ETGM would be Mr Hasnul Hassan of Bernama, supervised by Mr Masaru Imai of Japanese Kyodo and Mr Ahmad Kusaeni of the OANA Secretariat.
It was also suggested to discuss whether the alphabetical order for presenting country’s report would be based on the country or the name of the news agency. (Actually it was agreed later during the country report’s presentation that the alphabetical order would be based on the country.
It was also made it clear that there was no compulsory for OANA members to host the OANA meeting because it needs both technical and financial matters.
The Russian delegation, Itar Tass, reconfirmed that it would be ready to host the General Assembly in the next three years after Anadolu of Turkey.
Dr Ahmad MukhlisYusuf also reafirmed the duty of the OANA to strengthen commitment by assigning someone in the respective membders of OANA to upload the text and photo to the OANA Website.
He also said that News Agency has problems, as people tend to take news from Western and the question was “How to make our news agency to take responsible for it.
Members are committed to sharing their management expertise with all members. Each member will do this by writing in their country report in the upcoming meeting.
Members agree to use the internet as the enabler.
Shortly before the departure of ANTARA’s delegation, Mehr News Agency handed a draft design of OANA flag which would be raised at the upcoming OANA General Assembly in Istanbul next year. It is also expected that the meeting would also discuss about the flag no matter, whether it would be approved or not.

Tehran,
November 17th, 2009

Rapporteur General,

Hasnul Hasan
Bernama News Agency

Supervised by,
1.Massaru Imai ( Kyodo News Agency)
2.Akhmad Kusaeni ( Antara News Agency)