KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 13 - When the 8th Islamic Conference of Information Ministers (ICIM) under the auspices of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) ended in Rabat, Morocco, late last month, Malaysia again stamped its mark in the Islamic world as far as providing concrete solutions was concerned.

Led by Information Minister Datuk Ahmad Shabery Cheek, the Malaysian delegation managed to move two important proposals into further action.

The first was to hold a film festival among OIC countries and the second was to train and equip Palestinians in the New Media.

Malaysia has been entrusted by OIC Secretary-General Prof Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu to get the film festival proposal moving.

A working group comprising Syria, Turkey, Iran, Indonesia, Egypt, Morocco and Malaysia will look into the hosting of the festival, aimed at creating a market place for creative industries in the OIC.

Shabery explained that a film festival would fire the imagination of film produccers and directors as well as other people in the creative industries to produce works for international audiences and get better returns on their investments and efforts.

He said it was not good enough to only produce works just for local audiences.

In addition, Shabery said, the proliferation of good quality films, documentaries and other local content would also help fill the additional available airtime slots when RTM would have more channels under its on-going digitalisation programme.

"Having more channels means providing more opportunities for local creative people to produce content locally," he said."But they also have to produce good quality content so that their works can be sold overseas as well."

In terms of training and equipping Palestinians in the New Media, Malaysia will contact the Palestinian embassy in Kuala Lumpur to establish the lines of communications so that this effort could be undertaken.

The move is to enable Palestinians, who may be hampered by the Israeli regime, to tell about the real situation and hardship in their homeland to the outside world through the New Media.

At the ICIM meeting, Malaysia was also named as part of a ministerial supervisory sub-committee comprising Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, Egypt, Senegal, Syria and Morocco to evaluate a development action plan to deal with the external media with the aim of correcting possible distortions of Islam and the ummah.

This sub-committee will study the use of the services of a team of specialised experts to address the non-Islamic world in a language that is easily understood.

Meanwhile, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Morocco have pledged to work closer with Malaysia in the field of media and information. The pledge was made during Shabery's bilateral meetings with Iran's Culture and Islamic Guidance Minister Hosein Safar Harandi, Saudi Arabia's Culture and Information Minister Dr Iyad Ameen Madani and Morocco's Minister of Communication Khalid Naciri.

At their meetings, they stressed on the need for Bernama and RTM to step up cooperation with counterparts in their respective countries.

During Shabery's meeting with Harandi, the latter also expressed the hope that Malaysia would be able to provide a suitable candidate to head the Jeddah-based Islamic Broadcasting Union (IBU).

By Yong Soo Heong