site.btaNews Agencies of Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina Sign Cooperation Agreement

The national news agencies of Bulgaria and Bosnia and Herzegovina: the Bulgarians News Agency (BTA) and the Federal News Agency (FENA), signed a cooperation agreement here on Thursday. They will have free access to their news and photo services, will exchange news and photos on a daily basis, and their staffers will share experience during reciprocal professional visits every year.

The document was signed by BTA Director General Kiril Valchev and FENA Managing Director General Elmir Huremovic.

The signing took place before the opening of the Spring Conference and the General Assembly of the European Alliance of News Agencies (EANA), which is taking place in Sarajevo. 

Valchev said that BTA-FENA agreement will help the partners cover in a more full-fledged manner about the subjects and people in the two countries. He spoke about the centuries-old contacts between people in what are now Bulgaria and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

For his part, Huremovic noted that the partnership agreement provides an opportunity for acceleration and strengthening his agency's ties with BTA.

"We have a long-standing cooperation in various fields, especially in the exchange of news content, and this will be one step further towards the improvement of that cooperation," the FENA head said, quoted by his agency. He hopes that Bulgaria and Bosnia and Herzegovina will establish even better mutual relations in the coming period and will achieve greater understanding in the economy, culture and tourism through the cooperation of their news agencies.

The BTA Director General recalled that Bulgaria was the first country in the world to recognize Bosnia and Herzegovina as an independent state exactly 30 years ago. He presented the FENA Managing Director with a copy of the newsletter BTA Daily News dated January 15, 1992 containing three news items about that historic moment: the Philip Dimitrov Government's decision on the recognition, the consent granted by President Zhelyu Zhelev, and the support for the move by the political parties represented in Parliament.

Valchev and Huremovic accepted an invitation by Bulgaria's Charge d'Affaires in Sarajevo, Nikola Nikolov, who was present at the signing, that their agencies act as media partners of an exhibition about writer Isak Samokovlija, who was born in the Bosnian town of Gorazde in 1889 and whose ancestors came from Samokov, Bulgaria. The exhibition will be staged in Samokov and Sarajevo.