Schroeder will ask China to buy 50 Airbus A320

Schroeder will ask China to buy 50 Airbus A320

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder will call on China during
a visit to Beijing next week to order up to 50 Airbus A320 jet
planes worth 3 billion euros (2.7 billion dollars), a top
official close to the German government said late Friday.

The chancellor Saturday starts a week-long tour of Pakistan,
India and China focused on encouraging the international alliance
against terrorism and finding a political solution to the
conflict in Afghanistan.

In China, during talks Wednesday with Premier Zhu Rongji and
Thursday with President Jiang Zemin, Schroeder will plead the
case for purchasing the Airbus A320.

In August John Leahy, commecial director of the European
consortium, told the Wall Street Journal that Airbus Industrie
was negotiating with China for the sale of A320 planes and hoped
to reach an agreement by the end of the year.

A spokesman for Airbus Industrie said then that the Chinese
market was put at "around 1,600 aircraft over the next 20 years,
corresponding to a value of 149 billion dollars. We are aiming
for half this market," he said, adding that the Chinese
especially needed medium-haul planes like the A320.

The Airbus fleet in China, Hong Kong and Macau currently
totals 140, he said.

Xu Dengying, of the state company China Aviation Supplies
Import and Export, told the American financial daily that there
were plans to buy Airbus, but also Boeing and Russia planes.

Before continuing more intensive discussions, the state
company needed the go-ahead from the authorities who had already
given the green light for an order of 36 Boeing 737 jets, Xu
said. --AFP