ASTANA, June 24. /ITAR-TASS/. Participants in the 18th meeting of the Council of Heads of state-run news agencies from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) states which opened in the Kazakh capital on Tuesday are discussing integration processes in Eurasian space and preparation to celebrations on occasion of the 70th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.
High on the agenda of the council’s meeting are topical issues of journalist activity and creative cooperation, issues of information cooperation between the CIS states, including progress of implementing joint projects within the Association of National News Agencies of the CIS states, the council’s organizing committee said.
Participants in the council’s meeting noted that journalists in some countries have to work in heavy conditions fulfilling their professional duties with the risk for life. Chief executives of CIS news agencies observed a minute of silence for two journalists of Russian central television and radio broadcasting company VGTRK Igor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshin, Italian photo journalist Andrea Rocchelli and interpreter Andrey Mironov who were killed in Ukraine.
Director-General of Russian government-run news agency ITAR-TASS Sergei Mikhailov, who chairs the Council of Heads of CIS state-run news agencies, noted that the council was holding a meeting in the city of Astana, where a treaty creating the Eurasian Economic Union was signed on May 29 bringing together Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus. “This large-scale integration project should be and will be in the focus of permanent attention of CIS state-run news agencies. Our priority task is to follow attentively the process of forming and developing this union, explain and show distinctly advantages of new level of interstate cooperation and point to problems that may arise on this path,” Mikhailov said.
Participants in the council’s assembly debated a joint project to hold a photo exhibition dedicated to celebrations on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War. Heads of news agencies noted that harmonization of efforts in preparing and holding festive events and in covering celebrations on the occasion of this anniversary should be taken as “a tribute of deep respect to a great feat of CIS peoples against fascism, as a contribution to the cause of patriotic education of young generation and as efforts to avert distortion of historical facts and attempts to whitewash or even heroize fascism, its accomplices and their modern followers no matter under which masks they are hiding.”
Chiefs of state-run news agencies from Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan are taking part in the forum.
The Council of Heads of state-run news agencies of the CIS states is an important instrument to enhance integration cooperation between the CIS states. ITAR-TASS Director-General Sergei Mikhailov chairs the council.
The council seeks to ensure cooperation between the CIS states in information sphere, provide favorable conditions for unhampered information spreading and effective exchange of professional experience and to foster media partnership. One of the council’s main tasks is to promote development of new media technologies.