05/10/2005

AP names Abiko general manager for North Asia

TOKYO -- Kazuo Abiko, a 25-year veteran of The Associated Press, has been appointed the news cooperative's general manager for North Asia, with responsibility for its business and administration in Japan and the Korean Peninsula.

"Kaz Abiko is one of the most respected journalists in Asia, and his understanding of the needs of our subscribers in the region will be a tremendous asset," Clayton Haswell, the AP's San Francisco-based director for Asia and the Pacific, said May 10.

Abiko joined the AP in Tokyo in November 1978 as a photo editor and moved to the editorial department to become a newsman in 1981. He was named assistant chief of bureau in 1985, and general manager of the Tokyo bureau in 2004.

A graduate of Rikkyo (St. Paul's) University in Tokyo, where he majored in economics, he completed his second B.A. in journalism and M.A. in mass communications at California State University, Northridge.

He served as president of the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan from July 2001 to June 2002. He was the third Japanese and 10th AP man to be president of the FCCJ, which was founded in 1945.

contact: Jack Stokes, AP Corporate Communications, 212.621.1720