Azerbaijan, Baku, September 20 /Trend/
The Azerbaijan State Telegraph Agency AzerTAc was elected president of the General Assembly of the Organization of Asia-Pacific News Agencies (OANA) for 2016-2019. Thus, the next XVI session of the General Assembly will be held in Baku in 2016.
The rival of AzerTAc for the presidency of OANA for 2016-2019 was IRNA, the Iranian state agency which got nine votes against 14.
Following the election, Director General of AzerTAc Aslan Aslanov thanked the members of OANA for the great appreciation of the Azerbaijani agency's work. He promised to hold the Baku meeting at the highest level and to justify their confidence.
The election was held on Friday at the final meeting of XV General Assembly of OANA in Moscow. Turkish Anadolu agency handed over its three-year presidency in OANA to Russian ITAR-TASS for 2013-2016. the First Deputy Director General of ITAR-TASS Mikhail Gusman was elected the Secretary General of the Organization. following this, the participants of OANA meeting voted for increasing the number of Executive Bureau members from 11 to 13 and elected its personnel. AzerTAc became a member of OANA's Executive Committee for the third time. In addition, the number of members of OANA's Technical Committee was increased from five to seven.
It was decided to hold the next meeting of OANA's Executive Bureau in Bahrain. The organizer of the meeting will be the Bahraini news agency BNA.
Two news agencies - Trend and AzerTAc were representing Azerbaijan at the 15th General Assembly of the OANA.
OANA, which was founded inn 1961, is a large media organization and brings together 44 news agencies from 35 countries.