ROME AND PARIS\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Italy and France are locked in a battle to sell new naval vessels to Qatar, which is in a hurry to buy a defense kit as it prepares to host the Soccer World Cup in 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Italo-French clash took center stage last month at the Doha International Maritime Defence Exhibition and Conference (DIMDEX) in Qatar when Italy’s defense minister thought she was about to sign a nonbinding agreement for the sale of corvettes, only for the ceremony to be postponed after French lobbying, sources knowledgeable of the event said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The incident is the latest in a series of tussles over naval sales between France and Italy, two countries who have organized not one, but two\u00a0joint ship-building programs in recent years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Italian Defence Minister Roberta Pinotti flew to Qatar for the show, which was held March 29-31, with the aim of signing the nonbinding agreement to sell four corvettes and one supply vessel to the Qatari navy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The minister was accompanied by Mauro Moretti, CEO of Finmeccanica, and Giuseppe Bono, CEO of Italian shipyard Fincantieri, the two firms set to be involved in the deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The high-level delegation arrived in Doha following the visit to Rome in January by Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani, his first since taking the throne in June 2013.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One source knowledgeable of talks about naval vessels said that Italian financing of a deal, which could have been worth \u20ac3.5 billion (US $3.9 billion), was discussed, as was Italian involvement in the construction of a military hospital in Qatar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
France had previously offered its own deal for naval vessels\u00a0but had not reached the point of signing any deal, binding or nonbinding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But at DIMDEX, the French lobbied hard to have a chance to make a new, revised offer, sources in Italy told Defense News.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“France asked for time to change its offer,” one source said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“The Qatari minister of defense decided to oblige,” a second source said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian met Al-Thani at DIMDEX, while DCNS Chairman Herv\u00e9 Guillou and Thales\u00a0Senior Executive Vice-President Pascale Sourisse also attended the maritime exhibition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
France returned to negotiations with a discounted offer of three vessels, which would be variants on the FREMM frigates it built in a parallel development with the Italian Navy launched in 2005, the Italian sources said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The vessels would be equipped with MBDA Aster 30 missiles to hit ballistic missiles and Exocet, an anti-ship weapon, according to the French website LaTribune.\u00a0“The ship would be heavily armed,” a French defense executive said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Aster 30 is designed to hit targets more than 100 kilometers away, giving the frigate an extended range of strike. The French Navy sails Horizon, a 7,000 ton air defense frigate fitted with Aster 30, and the 6,000 ton FREMM frigate armed with Aster 15, which has a range of more than 30 kilometers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
DCNS, Thales and MBDA declined to comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thales has previously supplied Qatar MRR 3D and Triton naval radars, as well as\u00a0Tiger and Master land-based radars, a spokeswoman said. Master predates the more advanced Ground Master system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
France and Qatar hold close bilateral ties, said Mariane Renaux of Kyrema, a consultancy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Sept. 22, France signed a cooperation agreement on military training, following a statement of intent signed in May on cooperation on organizing the World Cup competition in 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Those agreements follow a 1994 defense and security cooperation accord and other bilateral pacts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Doha is significantly increasing spending in military equipment for several reasons,” Renaux said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is concern over the potential risk from Iran and tension between Iran and Saudi Arabia.\u00a0“If it wants to maintain a relative independence in its foreign policy, Qatar has to arm itself,” she said.\u00a0Doha is looking to protect offshore oil platforms and the World Cup matches.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Renaux added:\u00a0“DCNS needs exports.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The naval company needs to boost performance in 2016 after returning to profit in 2015 following a 2014 net loss of \u20ac347.3 million. A Qatar order is vital for the shipyard at Lorient, northern France.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a separate deal on March 30, Qatar and MBDA signed at DIMDEX a memorandum of understanding for a coastal missile system worth some \u20ac640 million, the missile company said in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The system can be armed with the Exocet MM40 Block 3 and the Marte extended range missiles. The missiles can be guided by radars on their own system or a coastal surveillance network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Doha has also ordered 24 Dassault Rafale fighters and missiles worth a total \u20ac6.7 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of that order, some \u20ac2 billion is for missiles, marking the biggest export deal for MBDA, a second French defense executive said. Sagem’s modular air-ground armament (AASM) armement air-sol modulaire<\/span>, a powered <\/span>smart bomb, is included in that order.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite the recent Qatar-France deals, one Italian source said he still backed Italy to close the naval deal. “The corvettes are preferred and this latest step is not a disappointment, merely a delay,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Italy and France are locked in a battle to sell new naval vessels to Qatar, which is in a hurry to buy a defense kit as it prepares to host the Soccer World Cup in 2022.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":115263,"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":11,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[11,33],"tags":[],"coauthors":[464,3345],"class_list":["post-57162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-global","category-home"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"U4P5VRBTTFF33D6U3P5FYX2COE","arc_canonical_url":"\/global\/2016\/04\/15\/italy-france-clash-over-naval-deal-with-qatar\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n