Reuters Staff
NOVEMBER 30, 2017 / 3:28 PM
PARIS (Reuters) - France is hoping to strike deals to
sell 12 Rafale fighter jets and armored vehicles to Qatar when President
Emmanuel Macron visits the country in December, the French defense minister
said on Thursday.
Qatar has been strengthening its military since its ties
with other Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, have deteriorated.
France, which has carefully avoided taking sides in that
dispute, is hoping to capitalize on a recent arms export surge which included
the sale of 24 Rafale jets to Doha in 2015. The Rafale is made by Dassault
Aviation.
“We’ve been negotiating for months,” defense minister
Florence Parly told BFM TV.
“We’ve also been negotiating for months about the sale of
a large number of armored vehicles and we hope it will be concluded when the
president goes to Qatar at the beginning of December,” she added.
French media have said France’s Nexter was in talks to
sell about 300 VBCI armored vehicles to Qatar.
However, a French government source told Reuters nothing
had been agreed yet.
Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain cut diplomatic
and trade links with Qatar in June, suspending air and shipping routes with the
world’s biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas.
Reporting by Michel Rose, Simon Carraud and Jean-Baptiste
Vey; Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta
Original post: reuters.com
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