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US Ambassador hopes an agreement for Romania to purchase the Patriot missiles to be concluded until the end of 2017
The ambassador of the United States of America in Bucharest, Hans Klemm stated on Tuesday that he hopes an agreement for Romania to purchase the Patriot missiles to be concluded until the end of 2017.
Attending a varnishing at the National Library, he appreciated that the statement according to which the Romanian state is interested in buying these missiles represents "delightful news."
We hope to reach an agreement until the end of 2017 in respect to the purchase of Patriot missiles, Hans Klemm pointed out.
The U.S. diplomat talked about the Romanian-American trade collaboration in the context of Prime Minister Sorin Grindeanu welcoming representatives of the American-Romanian Business Council (AMRO) in March.
I was grateful to PM Grindeanu, and to his entire Government for the warm and generous welcome they made to the American-Romanian Business Council in March. I believe that there are important perspectives for increasing the investments of U.S. companies in Romania, but also for individual agreements among the members of the trade mission, he stated. The U.S. diplomat added that this meeting will be followed by another, in the autumn, a larger one, in October. We hope that 100 companies will come to Romania, he stated.
Hans Klemm said that the Romanian-U.S. cooperation areas vary "from agriculture to defence." In this context, he underscored that the U.S. is very grateful to Romania for the decision to increase the allocation to 2 percent of the GDP for Defence, in accordance with the NATO provisions. This thing means, according to Klemm, an opportunity for the U.S. companies to collaborate with the Romanian ones in the Defence area, in order to develop new equipment that will help Romania and NATO, including the U.S.A., for better defence and deterrence missions.
The National Defence Minister Gabriel Les asserted on Sunday, at the TVR1 public broadcaster, that the Patriot surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems is one of the possible solutions had in mind for the air defence, because it's a "system tested in combat" and with "a balanced price," but added that a decision hasn't been made yet in this regard.
"This Patriot missiles, that have been discussed over the past days represent air defence which is currently extremely important to Romania. Patriot is one of the possible solutions that we have in mind, it's a very good system, a system that was tested in combat, a system that, from our current estimations, has a balanced price. I would like to say from the beginning that we have discussed so far and will discuss about air defence with certain operational requirements that would respond to the categories of forces, but we haven't make any decision in this regard," Minister Les stated.