The venue for the ABUs 2005 General Assembly and annual meetings has been changed to Hanoi, Vietnam. ABU Secretary-General, David Astley, made the announcement on 20 January after several months of discussions with Radio the Voice of Vietnam (VOV). He said that the Secretariat had been advised by Prasar Bharati in November that they were unable to host the 2005 General Assembly in India as planned.
VOV had previously indicated interest in hosting the General Assembly in 2005, so we immediately contacted them to see if they could step into the breach, and this week we were delighted to learn that they had obtained Government approval to proceed, Mr Astley said. The President of the ABU, Katsuji Ebisawa, said from Tokyo: I am very grateful to our Vietnam members for their generous offer to host the 2005 General Assembly. We look forward to visiting the wonderful city of Hanoi for what I am sure will be a memorable event.
The General Assembly will be hosted jointly by VOV and Vietnam Television (VTV) and the dates of the meetings will be November 21-28, with the Administrative Council meeting being held on November 24 and the three-day General Assembly opening on November 26. Mr Astley said that the dates were about two months later than last year to avoid the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. The dates were also chosen to avoid clashing with the WSIS meetings in Tunis on November 16-18, and the World Media Environment Summit in Sarawak on November 30 December 2, he added.