WASHINGTON\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Two long awaited sales of fighter jets to Kuwait and Qatar continue to be held up by the\u00a0US government, even as officials acknowledge growing frustration from the partner nations over the delay.
Asked repeatedly about the status of the sales, Vice Adm. Joseph Rixey, director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, declined to comment on where in the process the jets are stalled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“You\u2019re asking me things I\u2019m not gonna comment on,” Rixey said after the Common Defense annual conference here in Washington. “The status has not changed, but we\u2019re working very hard and waiting for the pre-negotiation period to start.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Heidi Grant, the point person for the US Air Force\u2019s foreign weapons sales, struck an optimistic tone when discussing the potential sale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Hopefully we\u2019re going to be coming close as a government to that solution,” Grant said. “We\u2019re still standing in there, we\u2019re the partner of choice, they want our aircraft and hopefully we\u2019ll see that happen.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Grant recently visited Qatar and had discussions with military officials there, and acknowledged that Doha is not happy with the situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“There\u2019s always frustration when you can\u2019t get things in a timely fashion, or on cost, or on schedule,” she said. “There is always going to be frustration. My job is to look at how we can mitigate that frustration.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Valerie Insinna in Washington contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There seems to be no end in sight for clearance of the jet sales by the US.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":52058,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":7,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[7,11,47,48],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3378],"class_list":["post-53556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-air","category-global","category-mideast-africa","category-the-americas"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"AV5FIFUI5VF7RHKVSUXRLTGKEY","arc_canonical_url":"\/air\/2016\/09\/07\/kuwait-qatar-jet-sales-still-in-limbo\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n