Rio, 3/9/2004 (Agência Brasil - ABr) - The purchase of 12 jet fighters for the Brazilian air force, worth some US$760 million, will be decided by the Defense Council at a meeting within the next few weeks, reports minister of Defense, Jose Viegas. In fact, it is expected that a final decision on the purchase will be made by the end of this month.

According to Viegas, at the moment there are no favorities. He also pointed out that there is no budgetary allocation this year for the purchase.

As for the role of Embraer in the bidding, Viegas said the idea was to have participation of domestic industry in building the aircraft which would include technological transfer. (AB)