The chief of the Associated Press of Pakistan said he was anticipating opportunities from the World Media Summit on Oct. 8-10 for media houses to forge better cooperation relations.

In an interview with Xinhua before his departure for Beijing, Mohammed Riaz said he was very glad to represent the state-run APP at the summit.

Riaz, who took office as the APP's managing director about one month ago, said the APP had been effectively cooperating with Xinhua, both in the past and at present.

"So I think this summit meeting will be very useful and very important to promote cooperation not only at the bilateral level between APP and Xinhua, but also among other news houses in the region," he said.

"South Asia is a very important region, and we have a lot of problems and a lot of challenges ... I think role of media is very important at this juncture as we are thinking how to overcome those challenges to meet those issues," Riaz added.

"I wish this meeting will be very successful, and promote regional cooperation, better interaction, mutual cooperation to affect more media, and put forward common objectives through media, and to help the governments, help the countries to serve the best of their people," he said.

"As a news agency, we attach great importance to the credibility. The government expects that the media should have credibility and responsibility and (that) they will follow some code of conduct," he said.

He pointed out that there was lots of misreporting, even some misquoting in the industry. Therefore, the great challenge was how to promote the credibility of the media.

Riaz said that the Western media were playing a dominant role due to a lack of cooperation among the regional news houses.

There was a need for better cooperation and greater interaction among media in the region, he stressed.

Pondering the question of how media should make better use of their influence to contribute to peace and stability, Riaz said that for the media, the most important thing was earning people's trust.

"For every country, especially for Pakistan, peace and stability is very important for socio-economic progress, and for the socio-economic progress we need to have great awareness about the problems Pakistan and other countries are facing," he explained.

Riaz said that world harmony and cooperation are top priority now.

"There are lots of conflicts ... there are misunderstandings, there are conflicts, there are differences of opinion. Hope for harmony and hope for peace requires better understanding of the situation, and again it requires maximum cooperation, and frequent interaction," he said.

He said the summit in Beijing "is a good step, but it's a rare step."

"In future what we need is to have frequent meetings," he proposed. "With frequent meetings between leading people of regional media, they can have better cooperation and come up with their own ideas."