Venezuela Mulls Buying Russian Planes after Deal with Spanish Company Falls Through

Venezuela is considering buying military transport planes from Russia after a Spanish company, facing U.S. opposition, dropped a plan to sell 12 planes to the South American country, a military adviser to President Hugo Chavez said Wednesday.
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CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuela is considering buying military transport planes from Russia after a Spanish company, facing U.S. opposition, dropped a plan to sell 12 planes to the South American country, a military adviser to President Hugo Chavez said Wednesday.

 

Gen. Alberto Muller said Venezuela began looking into buying transport planes from Moscow after Washington blocked the deal with Spain by forbidding the use of any U.S.-made components in the planes.

 

"Acquiring them from Russia has been studied," Muller told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "It’s most likely because we already have negotiations under way with them" on the final details of a separate deal for the transfer of 24 Sukhoi Su-30 fighter jets and 53 military helicopters.

 

Defense Ministry officials weren’t immediately available to confirm the account by Muller, who is not an official spokesman for the armed forces.

 

Venezuela already has defense deals with Russia that the government has estimated at US$3 billion (€2.4 billion), including sales of helicopters, Sukhoi warplanes and 100,000 Kalashnikov rifles.

 

Muller said the military has been planning to buy new transport planes for some time to replace aging U.S.-made Hercules C-130s.

 

The Spanish company, EADS-Casa, an affiliate of a European aerospace consortium, had been trying to get around U.S. objections to including American-made technology in its planes by substituting those parts with ones available on the international market.

 

Muller’s comments came after Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos told journalists that EADS-Casa had dropped plans for the deal. He said the proposed sale turned out to be too expensive to be commercially feasible.

 

"The financial effort needed to adapt to the technological requirements of the United States was not worth it," Moratinos said.

 

Muller described Spain’s decision as "unilateral" and said: "This is the product of pressure applied by the United States."

 

He also argued the government of Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero "has been differentiating itself, distancing itself from Venezuela."

 

Chavez’s government, however, has not echoed that view. Chavez himself has spoken of close ties with Zapatero.

 

The administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, which calls the leftist Chavez a destabilizing force in the region, has banned arms sales to his government.

 

Venezuelan officials have accused the U.S. in the past of putting pressure on Brazil to halt a sale of at least 24 Super Tucano planes, and also on Israel to block sales of parts for Venezuela’s fleet of U.S.-made F-16 jets.

 

The Spanish planes were supposed to be part of a broader package of military sales that the U.S. government protested. Caracas and Madrid agreed in November on the sale, which also calls for eight patrol boats to be built for Venezuela.

 

The total price tag was originally estimated at more than US$2.2 billion (€1.7 billion), which would have made it Spain’s largest-ever defense deal. The planes were to be part of that — 10 C295 transport planes and two C2-195 patrol planes — and were initially estimated to cost US$630 million (€500 million).

The Spanish announcement comes as Venezuela is struggling to win international support for its bid to gain Latin America’s open seat on the UN Security Council next year. Spain has endorsed Guatemala for the position.