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