Saudi Arabian investors due Sunday to take over United Press International said they plan to maintain the agency's international character if the sale is completed.
Abdullah Hassan Othman Masry, executive director of the London-based Middle East Broadcasting Centre Ltd., told Reuters in an interview the sale had yet to be completed and "anything could happen.""If the sale is completed, the buyers' policy would be to sustain the agency's international activities in gathering and marketing news," he added.
The London-based broadcaster, known as MBC, made a $3.95 million offer for the news agency last week and won a three-way contest in U.S. bankruptcy court on Tuesday to buy it. Control of UPI is scheduled to change hands on Sunday.
Masry said the 85-year-old agency under its new owners would cover the whole world, and not focus on one region. But they were particularly interested in news from the Middle East and the Third World and such global concerns as the environment.
UPI would also open a bureau in Saudi Arabia, he said.
MBC, which will be UPI's fifth owner in 10 years, was formed in 1989 and began broadcasting Arabic-language programs last September to Europe and the Middle East.
Masry, an anthropology graduate from American universities and a former senior official at the Saudi Education Ministry, identified MBC's principal owners as Sheik Walid al-Ibrahim and Sheik Saleh Kamel. He said other shareholdings were nominal.
Ibrahim controls the London-based television production company ARA International.