Abu Dhabi conference calls for lifting restrictions from the media

Dubai crown prince and defense minister of the United Arab Emirates UAE Sheikh Muhammad Bin Rashed al-Maktoum and the minister of culture and information Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed al-Nahyan called at the inauguration of the conference "The Arab media at the time of Information technology" in Abu Dhabi yesterday for lifting the restrictions which prevent the Arab media from performing its message of change and reform and linking the Arab city to modern age.

Sheikh Muhammad questioned at the opening of the three-day conference which is organized by the UAE center for research and strategic studies how "Arab media can compete while it is stuck to types of work common for long decades and how it can come up to withstand the global openness while still limited by laws that control information and ban the other's view and opinion."

He stressed that the media is like any other activity in its need to reforms and the change, being simultaneously a basic player in the question of reforms and the change." For his part, Sheikh Abdullah stressed in his speech on the need to reconsider laws which organize the media in the Arab states. Abdullah explained that the "transformation phase which we are witnessing today needs revision of the march of the Arab media at the internal and external levels." We see that the first step to that is a reconsideration of the publication and printing laws in the Arab states," he commented.