Tehran, IRNA – Managing Director of the Islamic Republic News Agency Ali Naderi on Tuesday termed Iran-China relations strategic and called for expanding Iran-China media cooperation.
On the sidelines of the 18th General Assembly of the Organization of Asia-Pacific News Agencies (OANA) in Tehran, Naderi met and held talks with the head of china’s Xinhua news agency’s office in the West Asia region.
Emphasizing the enhancing cooperation among OANA members, Naderi highlighted that OANA must be active and strong in the future to counter the unilateral western media flow.
Referring to the deep-rooted relations between IRNA-Xinhua, he noted that IRNA publishes its news in 10 main languages of the world, including Chinese, which shows the importance of China and the Chinese language for Iran.
Referring to the imminent introduction of the new representative of the IRNA news agency in Beijing, Naderi pointed to the Islamic Republic of Iran’s membership in the Shanghai Organization and the 25-year strategic agreement between Iran and China while calling for strengthening IRNA- Xinhua cooperation to have an active and strong presence on the future media sector.
The Head of China’s Xinhua News Agency’s office in the West Asia region, for his part, said that the IRNA news agency has given special attention to OANA, which he hopes it will bring good achievements.
Referring to the recent pandemic around the world, he stated that many lives, works, and media relations were affected by this pandemic, expressing hope that the Tehran summit would be the beginning of the development of cooperation of news agencies in the Asia-Pacific region.
Thanking IRNA for publishing its news in Chinese, he added that Xinhua News Agency is trying to launch its Persian-language news division soon.
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 the rotating president of the OANA.
Source: Islamic Republic News Agency – IRNA
