Defense Minister says EADS CASA deal is still on track

The Venezuelan Defense Ministry has officially declared that the EADS CASA airplane deal is still on track.

A top military aide to Hugo Chavez had thrown the matter into confusion when he said the deal was off because the planes, shorn of their US-made components to circumvent American nonproliferation law, were becoming too expensive.

EADS CASA's sale of CN-235 and C-295 military patrol and transport planes has been an embarrassment for its lobbyists in Washington, who want to sell the same aircraft to the Pentagon to serve as the Joint Cargo Aircraft (JCA).

General Raúl Isías Baduel (pictured), Venezuela's minister of defense, announced at a July 28 news conference that "the negotiation that is proceeding with the Spanish enterprise [EADS CASA] is for 496 million euros for the purchase of ten C-295 medium-transport aircraft and two [CN-235] maritime patrol aircraft," Spain's ABC newspaper reports from Caracas.

According to the Spanish report, Baduel "indicated that the contract was 'certified by the contraloría [accounting tribunal] of the Ministry of Defense on the 28th of November of last year.' The minister added that the Spanish enterprise 'still has not presented the guarantees.' In saying that, he referred to two deposits of 20 percent, for a value of 99 million euros each."