Ministers from the Non-Aligned Movement of developing nations will next week discuss the creation of an "alternative" news network which host Malaysia says it hopes will counter "biased" foreign reporting.

Setting up a Kuala Lumpur-based NAM News Network (NNN) run by Malaysia's national Bernama news agency will be among the issues on the agenda for the two-day meeting of NAM information ministers here next week.

"Currently, we rely on foreign wire agencies whose reports are biased against developing nations," Information Minister Abdul Kadir Sheikh Fadzir was recently quoted as saying by Bernama .

"By having NNN, we'll try to correct the distorted news and information received."

Kadir said the Malaysian cabinet had agreed that the country would fund the news agency.

Officials from NAM countries were to meet at the weekend to finalise the agenda for the ministerial meeting, which starts on Monday.

Sixth conference

Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi will open the conference, which will gather delegates from 80 member states including Afghanistan, Indonesia, Myanmar, North Korea and Zimbabwe.

This is the sixth conference of NAM information ministers. The last one was held nearly 10 years ago in Abuja, Nigeria. This year, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Serbia-Montenegro and Ukraine will send observers.

Syed Jamil Syed Jaafar, Bernama general manager, insisted that NNN would not be a competitor to existing international news agencies.

"The NNN will be more of an alternative source of news on developing nations which are not covered by bigger international news agencies," he said.

The idea had earlier been raised in 1976 but failed to materialise due to the lack of sophisticated technology at the time, he said.

The advent of the Internet, access to which is now available in almost all NAM member countries, could help make the proposal a reality, he added.

"NAM countries must take the opportunity to use the existing technologies to establish their dream news network, which they had not been able to realise before due to financial constraint and others," he said.

Malaysia is the current chairman of the Non-Aligned Movement, a grouping of more than 100 mainly developing nations formed during the Cold War as an alternative to the Western and Eastern power blocs.

In recent years the grouping has turned its attention to social issues as it struggles to maintain relevance in the modern world.