The United Arab Emirates announced a series of deals to equip its armed forces worth around 358 million dollars on Sunday, the first day of the Middle East's largest military show which it is hosting. The two biggest contracts went to Germany's Rohde and Schwarz Gmbh, which will upgrade the Emirati army's communications system at a cost of 528 million dirhams (144 million dollars), and Italy's Agusta SPA, which will modernise helicopters currently with the armed forces at a cost of 261 million dirhams (71 million dollars), UAE military procurement chief Brigadier Obaid al-Ketbi told reporters on the sidelines of IDEX 2005.
The third biggest deal went to Jordan, whose King Abdullah II was in Abu Dhabi on Sunday to attend the opening of the five-day exhibition in which more than 900 exhibitors from 50 countries are taking part.
Advanced Industries of Arabia Company LLC will sell the UAE light military vehicles costing 153.7 million dirhams (41.8 million) dollars, said Ketbi, who is the exhibition's spokesman.
France's Rockwell-Collins will supply radars for helicopters worth 12.8 million dollars, and the UAE will buy electronic equipment worth 12.7 million dollars from South Africa's Avetronics Ltd, Ketbi said.
THALES EYES SAUDI BORDER SECURITY DEAL: French defence electronics company Thales said on Sunday it was still in talks to supply a border surveillance system worth 7 billion euros ($8.7 billion) to Saudi Arabia, which is fighting al Qaeda violence.
"We are still in negotiations," Jean-Paul Perrier, chairman of Thales International, told Reuters at the International Defence Exhibition and Conference in the United Arab Emirates.
He declined to give a timeframe or other details of the contract. It has been the subject of on-off negotiations for about 15 years.
Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich Gulf Arab states are keen on investing in border security equipment to prevent the spread of al Qaeda militancy or insurgents from nearby Iraq.
Riyadh has been battling a wave of al Qaeda attacks aimed at destabilising the world's top oil producing country.
The Saudi contract would be a shot in the arm for Thales, which has relied heavily in past years on another Saudi contract - the Sawari frigate programme. Revenue from the Sawari deal is expected to dwindle in the years ahead.
Thales has already sold security equipment such as infrared cameras to Saudi Arabia to protect holy sites in Mecca and small radars to the UAE to guarantee border security, Perrier said.
The French giant said it has also bid for a contract which could be worth more than 100 million euros to install technology for the UAE to link its army, air force and other divisions.
"They have to use their equipment efficiently by co-ordinating all of it through a command control centre. Such technology is vital for all the Gulf if they want to develop their regional capability," he said.
Perrier said Thales was shifting its sales in the Gulf to security-related products in a region now keen on maintaining internal security, protecting its borders and looking for technology to efficiently manage its modern armed forces.
"Today the Gulf market is developing more into the security field rather than defence, because all countries of the region are developing border surveillance and protecting their assets rather than building forces," Perrier said.
Despite that, Thales is looking at Algeria and Libya as two new markets for traditional large-scale military equipment.
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