Kyodo chief: Tehran meeting opens new horizon for OANA

Tehran, IRNA – Director General of Japan State News Agency (Kyodo) Toshimitsu Sawai said on Wednesday that the Tehran meeting opened a new horizon for the Asia-Pacific media. On the sideline of the 18th General Assembly of the Asia-Pacific News Organization (OANA), Toshimitsu Sawai in an exclusive interview with IRNA said that there was good coordination among OANA members at the Tehran meeting, and the final communiqué of the OANA meeting in Tehran would be a way to promote the role of the national media in tackling emerging challenges. Thanking IRNA and the Managing Director of IRNA Ali Naderi, he underlined that the OANA meeting in Tehran was very successful. OANA, with around 50 members, has a good potential to link Asia-Pacific nations and governments in various cultural, economic, social, and political fields. Referring to the deep-rooted relations between IRNA and Kyodo for more than a decade, he highlighted that IRNA has always played a constructive role in OANA, referred to his meeting with Naderi, and stated that IRNA Chief had a constructive approach to promoting relations with the Japanese media. The 18th Organization of Asia-Pacific News Agencies General Assembly started on Monday in Tehran and the closing ceremony of the meeting was held on Tuesday afternoon. The OANA was established to facilitate information dissemination among regional countries with the support of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). IRNA, Fars, and Mehr are the three news agencies in Iran representing the Islamic country in the OANA. IRNA is one of the first members of the organization, and presided over it between 1997 to 2000; then, the Iranian news agency acted as the vice chairman of the regional organization in 2016, and now IRNA is a member of the executive committee of OANA. Follow us on Twitter @IrnaEnglish