M'SIA AGAIN STAMPS MARK IN ISLAMIC WORLD

By Yong Soo Heong

KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 13 (Bernama) -- When the 8th Islamic Conference of
Information Ministers (ICIM) under the auspices of the Organisation of the
Islamic Conference (OIC) ended in Rabat, Morocco, late last month, Malaysia
again stamped its mark in the Islamic world as far as providing concrete
solutions was concerned.

Led by Information Minister Ahmad Shabery Cheek, the Malaysian delegation
managed to move two important proposals into further action.

The first was to hold a film festival among OIC countries and the second was
to train and equip Palestinians in the New Media.

Malaysia has been entrusted by OIC Secretary-General Prof Ekmeleddin
Ihsanoglu to get the film festival proposal moving.

A working group comprising Syria, Turkey, Iran, Indonesia, Egypt, Morocco
and Malaysia will look into the hosting of the festival, aimed at creating a
market place for creative industries in the OIC.

Shabery explained that a film festival would fire the imagination of film
produccers and directors as well as other people in the creative industries to
produce works for international audiences and get better returns on their
investments and efforts.

He said it was not good enough to only produce works just for local
audiences.

In addition, Shabery said, the proliferation of good quality films,
documentaries and other local content would also help fill the additional
available airtime slots when RTM would have more channels under its on-going
digitalisation programme.

"Having more channels means providing more opportunities for local creative
people to produce content locally," he said."But they also have to produce good
quality content so that their works can be sold overseas as well."

In terms of training and equipping Palestinians in the New Media, Malaysia
will contact the Palestinian embassy in Kuala Lumpur to establish the lines of
communications so that this effort could be undertaken.

The move is to enable Palestinians, who may be hampered by the Israeli
regime, to tell about the real situation and hardship in their homeland to the
outside world through the New Media.

At the ICIM meeting, Malaysia was also named as part of a ministerial
supervisory sub-committee comprising Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, Egypt, Senegal,
Syria and Morocco to evaluate a development action plan to deal with the
external media with the aim of correcting possible distortions of Islam and the
ummah.

This sub-committee will study the use of the services of a team of
specialised experts to address the non-Islamic world in a language that is
easily understood.

Meanwhile, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Morocco have pledged to work closer with
Malaysia in the field of media and information. The pledge was made during
Shabery's bilateral meetings with Iran's Culture and Islamic Guidance Minister
Hosein Safar Harandi, Saudi Arabia's Culture and Information Minister Dr Iyad
Ameen Madani and Morocco's Minister of Communication Khalid Naciri.

At their meetings, they stressed on the need for Bernama and RTM to step up
cooperation with counterparts in their respective countries.

During Shabery's meeting with Harandi, the latter also expressed the hope
that Malaysia would be able to provide a suitable candidate to head the
Jeddah-based Islamic Broadcasting Union (IBU).
-- BERNAMA