Managing Directors of IRNA and Rossiya Segodnya (Russia Today) signed cooperation agreement on Sunday, IRNA reported.
The agreement was signed by Mohammad Khoddadi and Dimitry Konstantinovich Kiselyev to expand professional ties and cooperation between the two news agencies.
In the meeting, Khoddadi underlined that IRNA is to develop its activities with friendly countries news agencies to break monopoly by the western media.
He continued that , in the past, there were news coalition such as Association of Caspian Sea News Agencies (ACSNA) and the News Agency of member states of Economic Cooperation Organization ( ECO) called ECONA, which Iran and Russia were members to both and now it is necessary to revive the news agencies and develop cooperation of the member states.
Referring to commissioning Russian language news line in IRNA in a near future, Khoddadi called the issue as a measure to present news for its Russian-language audience.
He termed the great volume of information as a big challenge for media and underlined that under such situation efforts should be made by professional works.
Khoddadi offered a proposal to establish a coalition of news agencies of member countries of Shanghai Cooperation Organization ( SCO) and added that the upcoming summit of the SCO in Moscow would be an opportunity to expand ties between member states news agencies through strengthening and expanding media cooperation.
Managing Director of Rossiya Segodnya (Russia Today) Dimitry K. Kiselyov, for his part, welcomed the proposal and expressed desire to increase cooperation between the two news agencies and receive news from IRNA directly.