(MENAFN- Trend News Agency) BAKU, Azerbaijan, March 23. The Association of
Balkan News Agency – Southeastern Europe (ABNA-SE) held its General
Assembly in Thessaloniki, trend reports via the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA).
The BTA was represented at the forum by Director General Kiril
Valchev.
The general meeting took place on the last day the ABNA-SE
Conference on "The role of news information in the new Balkan
reality", organised by the Athens-Macedonian News Agency
(ANA-MPA).
The general assembly reached a series of decisions regarding the
operation as well as the further development of ABNA-SE, which as
of today numbers 12 members following the addition by unanimous
consent of the Italian news agency ANSA, reports ANA-MPA.
ANSA joins the 11 founder members, which include the ANA
(Greece), Anadolu Ajansi (Türkiye), Agerpres (Romania), ATA
(Albania), BTA (Bulgaria), FENA (Bosnia-Herzegovina), HINA
(Croatia), KYPE (Cyprus), KOSOVAPRESS (Kosovo), MIA (North
Macedonia) and MINA (Montenegro).
Starting the assembly, the president and general director of
ANA-MPA Aimilios Perkidaris welcomed the participants to
Thessaloniki: "We have proved that if we work together for a common
goal, the strengthening of the action of our union, we can achieve
many things. Starting from Thessaloniki, the conference we
organized in the preceding days but also with today's general
assembly, we laid strong foundations in order to further develop
ABNA-SE."
Anadolu Agency Director-General Serdar Karagoz said that the
next ABNA-SE General Assembly will be held in Istanbul in 2024. The
cooperation under ABNA-SE's auspices can lead to the creation of a
bridge between peoples and countries. Lately, particularly after
the earthquake disaster in Türkiye of February 6, we are witnessing
a softening in the diplomacy between Türkiye and Greece, he noted.
Greece, too, was hit by a tragedy with the train crash. These two
disasters actually brought the two countries closer, Karagoz
said.
BTA Director General and ABNA-SE Secretary General Kiril Valchev
said that Moldova's MOLDPRESS has applied for membership in
ABNA-SE. He recalled that ABNA-SE has existed for 30 years but
until recently functioned as a club of close friends.
The ANA-MPA term of presidency of ABNA-SE will conclude in
September, when it will hand over the presidency to Anadolu.
At the previous General Assembly, which took place in the
Bulgarian Black Sea city of Burgas in September 2022, a decision
was taken for the official registration of ABNA-SE and it took
place in October the same year. Since then, its permanent seat is
in Bulgaria and the Secretary General of the organisation is BTA
Director General Valchev.