New Delhi, February 9 :

The first conference of editors from SAARC nations kicked off here today. The two-day conference, jointly organised by the India’s Ministry of External Affairs and the Media Development Foundation was inaugurated by secretary to the ministry Shiv Shanker Menon.

The focus will be on three main points, including fostering communications in the SAARC region, upgrading its quality, press freedom, accountability, social responsibility and press and foreign policy.

A press release issued by the Ministry of External Affairs said that press-related issues would be taken up in an open and free way in the conference and how these should be introduced among people and in public areas in the South Asian region. This will help achieve common goals of the SAARC nations with regard to values, direction, teaching, wisdom in the communications field, it said.

Some 45 senior media persons from the seven SAARC nations are attending the conference. “At a time when the SAARC summit meeting is less than two months away, this conference will certainly set a future course for us to decide our destination,” Ministry secretary Menon said in his inaugural address. “The development in technology and transportation sectors have made our world smaller,” he added.

He said he is working for free visits of media persons and movement of communications-related products and their promotion in the SAARC region.

Sri Acharya from Annapurna Post, Yubraj Ghimire of Samaya weekly, Bijay Kumar Pandey of Nepal Television, Narayan Wagle of Kantipur and Kanakmani Dixit of Himal fortnightly are participating in the conference.