Green light for Chile jet order

The Chilean government has authorised the air force to begin negotiating the purchase of F-16 fighter jets from the United States to upgrade its ageing fleet.

The decision to buy ten combat aircraft made by the Lockheed Martin company comes after some three years of deliberations and is worth more than six-hundred million dollars.

Correspondents say the deal is bad news for France and Sweden which were also in the running -- the French company Dassault with its Mirage 2000, and Saab of Sweden with its Jas 39 Gripen jet. The decision comes as Chile and the United States have begun preliminary moves to agreeing a free trade deal, but President Ricardo Lagos said the choice of Lockheed Martin was based entirely on technical reasons.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service