General Assembly of Arab States Broadcasting Union starts

Jeddah, January 10, SPA--The General Assembly of Arab States
Broadcasting Union (ASBU) inaugurated here today its ordinary 28th
session under the chairmanship of Minister of Culture and Information
Iyad bin Amin Madani.

In his speech, the Union's Director General Salaheddin Mua'oui
thanked the Ministry of Culture and Information, headed by Minister
Madani for the kind invitation to host the meetings of the Executive
Council, the General Assembly and their committees.
Addressing the session, the Minister of Culture and Information Iyad
bin Amin Madani welcomed the Director General of Arab States
Broadcasting Union, the heads and representatives of member bodies of
the Union and the audience.

He expressed his happiness that Jeddah hosted the elite of the media
and experts in the information sector, thanking them for accepting
the invitation to attend the meetings.

Jeddah

The Minister expressed his thanks to and appreciation of the Union
for its pioneering role in the advancement of audio and visual
information in the Arab world to keep abreast of continuing
developments in this area, noting that the Union becomes a model for
successful and fruitful work of the joint Arab media action.

He said that the Union has run important paces on the way of
modernization and development including all aspects of its work and
benefiting from the revolution of the media and audio-visual system
notably Multi-Means and Services Exchange System ( menos) which will
be inaugurated this evening as one of the outstanding and unique
projects of its kind reflecting this development and leadership.

He expressed the hope that the Union covers under its umbrella all
Arab radio and television effective bodies from the private sector
while maintaining the fundamentals of the Union and its basic
objectives.

The Minister emphasized the need to enhance joint Arab institutional
action and its success.

The Minister added that the information enormous surge poses a major
challenge for the Arab information and puts in front of it many
problems, mainly related to the contents of the information message
transmitted via space, including 250 Arab broadcasting satellite
bodies, 226 private bodies transmit or re-transmit around 520 Arab
satellite channels on their networks aiming to strengthen the values
of dialogue and to maintain an objective media message in consistent
with a document organizing radio and television broadcasts to reach
it to be as a reference frame of contents to ensure freedom of
expression and maintaining identity and social balance.

The minister stressed that the Kingdom has been working hard to make
this document as a basis for Arab legislation in this area, as it is
the case in the rest of the world.