Agence France-Presse |<\/p>\n
Iraq and the\u00a0Czech<\/a>\u00a0Republic have made progress in talks on the sale of 28 Czech-made L-159 subsonic fighters to Baghdad, their leaders said in Prague yesterday.<\/p>\n \u201cA certain agreement has been reached,\u201d Iraqi Prime Minister\u00a0Nouri al-Maliki<\/a>\u00a0told reporters after meeting his\u00a0Czech<\/a>\u00a0counterpart Petr Necas in Prague, adding that technical details still needed to be ironed out.<\/p>\n Al-Maliki did not provide further details on the deal, but did say that Iraq also had an offer for U.S.-made F-16 fighters. Necas said the defense ministers of both countries \u201cwill now work hard to fine tune the conditions of the transaction.\u201d\u00a0Czech<\/a>\u00a0Defense Minister Alexandr Vondra said talks were focused on 24 one-seat fighters and four two-seaters.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is premature to give the value of the deal,\u201d he said before meeting Iraq\u2019s acting Defense Minister Saadun al-Dulaimi. The L-159 fighters, which Prague has been trying to sell for years, are made by Aero Vodochody, the largest\u00a0Czech<\/a>\u00a0aircraft producer controlled by the Czech-Slovak private equity group Penta. Aero is also a sub-contractor for major arms makers including EADS, Saab and Sikorsky, Saab and EADS.<\/p>\n The Iraqi delegation\u2019s visit to Prague comes on the heels of a three-day visit to Moscow, during which\u00a0Russia<\/a>\u00a0announced signing more than $4.2 billion in arms contracts with Iraq. The deal made\u00a0Russia<\/a>\u00a0the violence-torn Middle East nation\u2019s largest weapons supplier after the U.S. Iraq has been scrambling for means to protect its borders ever since U.S. troops withdrew in 2011.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Agence France-Presse | Iraq and the\u00a0Czech\u00a0Republic have made progress in talks on the sale of 28 Czech-made L-159 subsonic fighters to Baghdad, their leaders said in Prague yesterday. \u201cA certain agreement has been reached,\u201d Iraqi Prime Minister\u00a0Nouri al-Maliki\u00a0told reporters after meeting his\u00a0Czech\u00a0counterpart Petr Necas in Prague, adding that technical details still needed to be ironed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,16],"tags":[38],"class_list":{"0":"post-16323","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-latest-news","7":"category-war-terrorism","8":"tag-iraq"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16323\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}