ANKARA

Anadolu Agency, Turkey’s top news source, on Friday was elected to assume vice presidency of the Organization of Asia-Pacific News Agencies (OANA), at the 17th annual meeting.

The annual meeting, hosted by the South Korean News Agency (Yonhap) and OANA General Assembly in South Korea's capital Seoul, ended.

OANA's 44 member news agencies from 35 countries took part in the group’s general assembly, along with observers from the World Congress of News Agencies (NAWC), Union of Mediterranean News Agencies (AMAN), and Atlantic Federation of African Press Agencies (FAAPA).

At the meeting, Anadolu Agency was represented by Muhammet Salih Demirkan, deputy chairman of the board, and Deputy Director General Mustafa Ozkaya.

Yonhap took over the OANA presidency from the Azerbaijan State News Agency (AzerTAc) to serve for the next three years.

Along with the Anadolu Agency, AzerTAc, Chinese News Agency XINHUA and Russia's TASS news agency were also elected to vice-presidency of the organization for 2019-2022.

Iran's IRNA news agency was elected in the meeting to assume OANA presidency for 2022-2025.

At the end of the two-day meeting, the managers of the news agencies declared their intention to promote peace on the Korean Peninsula and the participants signed Seoul Declaration.

The joint declaration stressed the responsibilities of press members as "strengthening cooperation among news agencies of Asia-Pacific region and aiming to find solutions to common challenges faced by members," referring to the goals of the organization.

OANA was founded in 1961 on the initiative of UNESCO to provide direct and free exchange of news between news agencies in an area of more than half the world's population.

Anadolu Agency joined OANA in 1978.