PM to inaugurate IPI world congress

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, DEC. 13. The world congress of the International Press Institute, to be hosted in India after 35 years, will be inaugurated by the Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, here on January 27. The event will coincide with the 50th general assembly of IPI.

The three-day congress will be addressed by luminaries from different fields of excellence, notable among them being the Nobel laureate, Mr. Amartya Sen, the Dalai Lama, the Booker Prize winner, Ms. Arundhati Roy, the Union Ministers, Ms. Sushma Swaraj and Mr. Arun Jaitley, and Chief Ministers Mr. S. M. Krishna and Dr. Farooq Abdullah.

Addressing a press conference here today, Mr. Philip Mathew, the Managing Editor of Malayala Manorama, who is on the International Board of IPI, said there would be six business sessions: India - Experiment in Democracy; The Indian Media Landscape; Tensions and Conflicts in the Indian Subcontinent; The Global Informational Revolution; Exploiting the Internet for Publishing Companies; and Freedom of Expression in the IT Era.

Prominent foreign speakers would be Mr. I. A. Rehman, Director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, Ambassador Shirin Tahir Kheli of Johns Hopkins University, Ms. Barbara Crossette, and the U.N. Bureau Chief of The New York Times.

An organising committee had been formed, with Ms. Shobhana Bharatia, vice-president of the Hindustan Times, as chairperson, Mr. M. K. Razdan, General Manager, PTI, as chairman of Business Advisory Committee; Mr. Rajan Mathew, General Manager of Malayala Manorama as Assembly Coordinator, and Mr. Philip Mathew.

The IPI was founded in New York in 1950 by a global network of editors and media executives.

Based in Vienna, it represents the collective voice of 2,000 editors, publishers, broadcasting executives and leading journalists from more than 100 countries.

It enjoys consultative status with the United Nations, UNESCO and the Council of Europe.

The last time India hosted the congress in 1966, it had just 60 members.

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Section  : National
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