UAE in final stages of talks to buy Rafale jets

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is in the final stages of negotiations to buy French Rafale fighter jets, the head of the Gulf nation’s air force told Reuters on Wednesday.

Abu Dhabi, which is looking to purchase 60 fighters worth an estimated $10 billion, is studying the Dassault-built Rafale after rejecting the four-nation Eurofighter.

“I think we are in the final stage of negotiations,” Major General Ibrahim Nasser Al Alawi, commander of the UAE Air Force and Air Defence, said in an interview at the Dubai Airshow when asked how close the UAE was to a deal to buy the Rafale.

In Paris, the French defence ministry declined to comment and Dassault Aviation was not immediately available.

After failing for years to win an order for its warplane, France has sold 24 Rafales each to Egypt and Qatar in recent months and is in talks to finalise the sale of another 36 to India.

France is said to be confident of winning two more foreign orders by the beginning of next year as it seeks to extend the string of multibillion-dollar deals.

Talks with Dassault to replace the company’s Mirage 2000-9 jets stalled in 2011 when the UAE publicly called its proposals “unworkable”. (RTRS)