Spanish aeronautics company EADS-CASA is to make efforts to have Washington lift a veto on its sale of 12 military aircrafts comprising US technology to Venezuela, after the corporation found that changing the components George W. Bush' administration vetoed would render the transaction nonviable.

In a meeting last week with Venezuelan Defense minister, admiral Orlando Maniglia, EADS-CASA representatives asked Spanish and Venezuelan authorities to wait for one month until they found "a final solution" to the sales agreement they initialed in November 2005, Spanish daily newspaper ABC reported.

However, sources claimed that replacing US components (avionics, radars and even engines, which are manufactured by US firm Honeywell) in C-295 airplanes with equipment manufactured in other countries would render the transaction unprofitable and nonviable. They claimed that such changes would virtually amount to designing a new model.

"Replacements would significantly increase the price of each aircraft and would require design modifications in wings and other components of this model, the C-295. Among other reasons, a change in engine would entail modifications in weight distribution and in the aircraft power," ABC explained in a report published Tuesday.

Industry sources told the Spanish newspaper that replacing US-made avionics components would cost over USD 1.7 million per aircraft, for a total of some USD 20 million, not to mention the cost of full engineering re-designing.
 
Therefore, moving forward with this negotiation would result in losses for EADS-CASA, and it would even risk losing contracts in the United States.