July 19 (BTA) - The Director of the Diplomatic Institute with the Foreign Minister, Tanya Mihailova, and BTA Director General Kiril Valchev signed a Partnership and Cooperation Agreement on Monday, the Bulgarian Diplomatic Service Day.

According to the agreement, every month news from the Diplomatic Institute, with text and video content, will be distributed by BTA under a special heading. The document also provides for access to the news agency's archives and meetings of attache interns and young diplomats with journalists. Future BTA correspondents abroad could also attend short courses at the Diplomatic Institute, Mihailova pointed out.

The Diplomatic Institute and BTA marked the Bulgarian Diplomatic Service day with a meeting with the institute's 16th class of attache interns at the agency's MaxiM Multimedia Centre.

Information is truly part of diplomacy, Valchev said, recalling before the candidate diplomats that BTA was actually conceived as part of Bulgarian diplomacy. He shared his desire to see the Bulgarian News Agency have a more distinctive presence in the region and become something of a Balkan agency besides a being a Bulgarian one. BTA is an objective agency, which works according to the highest standards and can be an extremely valuable source of information not only in Bulgaria, but also in the Balkans, he commented.

As an example, Valchev said that BTA's Daily News information bulletin had dedicated a special page to Balkan news every day and that diplomats in Sofia had told him this was very useful. He also said he wanted to see BTA have its own reporters for significant events in the Balkans, as well as a correspondent in Skopje and the other neighboring countries.

We are together in upholding Bulgarian priorities and working with Bulgarian citizens, Mihailova pointed out and recalled that BTA had begun its ''life'' as part of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Religious Denomination in 1898.

Although a young institution, the Diplomatic Institute is a project in development, Mihailova noted. She explained that Bulgaria did not have its own school for diplomats until 2003 when the institute was established, and that its main mission was a very high standard of education on a par with similar institutions.

For the ninth year in a row, the Diplomatic Institute also conferred its honorary annual "Docendo discimus" Award (''By teaching, we learn'' which is also the motto of the institute). The award is given to one Bulgarian and one foreign citizen or institution. This year's award goes to the Institute for Economic Policy, and its Executive Director Yasen Georgiev, and the International Organization of the Francophonie. NV/BR


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