Azerbaijan, Baku, Oct. 2 /Trend News, A.Huseynbala/

In October the Azerbaijani Press Council plans to hold a series of activities related to the level of training of journalists and the society to defamation, which will promote the liberalization of the information environment, the Head of the Press Council, Aflatun Amashov told Trend News on Oct. 2.

"There is a serious need for a dialogue between officials and journalists on certain topics. First, we must determine how our journalists are ready for defamation. I think after that we can come to some agreement in order to submit a bill on defamation "for public discussion and adopt it," he said.

The draft law on defamation was prepared with the support of the OSCE Baku Office in 2005. The working group designing the bill includes MPs Ganira Pashayeva and Azay Guliyev, representatives of journalist organizations and law scientists.

International organizations believe that Article 147 (defamation) and 148 (insult), which proposes criminal responsibility, should be removed from the country's Criminal Code.

Amashov said it is also planned to hold joint activities in connection with the bill on "Defamation" with other international organizations. "We will organize the discussions in Baku and in regions of the country. Now the issue is one of the priorities of the Council," said the chairman of the Press Council.

More than 4,000 media outlets were registered in Azerbaijan. Currently only 600 of them function. Nearly 400 newspapers and magazines are published and more than 20 television channels function. There are about 50 electronic media outlets, 20 news agencies, and the rest are the Internet resources in Azerbaijan.

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