Greece buys French planes to show gratitude for support on veto

[tigershark]

Greece buys French planes to show gratitude for support on veto
Athens /08/04/ 16:01

Greece is set to procure fighter jets Rafale and 15 choppers Super Puma from France, Greek daily Kathimerini writes in today's edition.

To this end, Greek Defense Minister Evangelos Meimarakis will be heading to Paris on Thursday to meet his French counterpart Herve Morin.

The paper says that this was another confirmation of the good bilateral relations, after France backed Greece at the NATO Summit in Bucharest, when it stood behind Athens's position to veto Macedonia's invitation for membership in the Alliance. /end/

Link
http://www.makfax.com.mk/look/novina/article.tpl?IdLanguage=1&IdPublication=2&NrArticle=107944&NrIssue=629&NrSection=20

[tigershark]

I look around and didn't see anything else could this be true?  Did anybody else see or hear anything on this?  I will keep looking there must be more.

[Globetrotter]

It sounds like good news for me, the Rafale is a very nice and capable airplane, so it would be sad to see it failed, which apparently is changing!

Lots of champagne in Dassault!!!!!!!!

I am going to keep my eyes peeled out there, but I am sure you'll bring back something in the near future hehe

[Webmaster]

Greek objection to Macedonia's NATO membership is so stupid. I could imagine a big frustration for the Macedonians, ow excuse me I should say Former-Yugoslav Macedonians  . This report is from a Macedonian newspaper, which makes you wonder big time about how accurate it is. It refers to Kathimerini as the source, I couldn't find an equivalent English report on their website, maybe it's in the Greek version.

Luckily we have some Greeks among us, anyone that can confirm this?

I find it hard to believe that this will actually make Greece choose Rafale all of a sudden, dropping all other options?

[valkyrian]

The Rafale as a candidate is on the news long before a mockup of the JSF appears. The real battle was between EADS and Dassault, and EADS initialy won. But due to Olympic Games the sale was postponed. Dassault was always a strong player in the Hellenic Air Force (Mirage F1, Mirage 2000). On the contrary, we never bought any Anglo_Italian_Spanish_German aircraft. So, it wouldn't surpise me if we end up with the Rafale.

And just bcz the name Macedonia was refered by Niels, a small comment :

I can't stand hearing Bush calling FYROM as Macedonia over and over again, and just bcz the only thing the makers of American foreign policy understand is money, i would like to see their faces when we decide to give our money to Dassault.
After all, the foreign policy is a matter of interests...if you support me, i will support you. If you don't support me, then take your planes and ...




By the way, the French today stated that if we buy their Frigates, they will let us install the SCALP NAVAL long range, stand off missile. So, why not?