September 26 (SeeNews) - NATO member Croatia has received 13 offers for the supply of fighter jets after sending letters to 26 potentially interested parties, the defence ministry said.
So far, the ministry has received five letters of interest for the delivery of new aircraft and eight letters of interest for used ones, the ministry said in a short statement on Wednesday.
It added that the bids will now be evaluated in line with the tactical and technical requirements of the Croatian air forces.
The ministry gave no further details.
According to an earlier report by daily Jutarnji List, the US, Sweden, Israel, Denmark, Norway, Italy and France are interested in selling new and used planes to Croatia.
In early September, Robert Kopal, a special advisor to prime minister Andrej Plenkovic, said that the government aims to buy 12 fourth-generation fighter jets by the end of 2020.
Kopal said that Croatia will launch two separate procedures - one for new aircraft and a second one for used jets, and will separately evaluate the offers it receives in each procedure.
In January, Croatia cancelled the purchase of 12 multi-purpose U.S.-made F-16 Barak combat aircraft from Israel, after the $500 million (456 million euro) deal was blocked by the United States.
In March 2018, Croatia reached an agreement with Israel for the acquisition of upgraded F-16 fighter jets used by Israel's air force, to replace its ageing fleet of Russian-made MiG-21 fighter jets. The Israeli offer was picked in an international tender that also attracted bids from Greece, Sweden and the United States. The deal with Israel needed the US approval for the sale of a US-made product to a third party.
In December 2018, however, Washington said it believed that Israel had acted unfairly as the F-16s are US-made and are not supposed to be transferred to a third party without the US consent, Israeli TV broadcaster Channel 10 reported back then. According to the report, the Trump administration was angry that Israel had added advanced electronic systems to the F-16s in order to sweeten its offer in the Croatian tender.
($=0.91288 euro)