British officials suggest it is simply because the UAE are being canny, being hard to get as the French are also in the market – trying to persuade the Gulf state to buy their Rafale aircraft instead of the Typhoon.
But the deal to buy the Rafale has hit difficulties because, though Dassault would prefer to team up with private-sector firms such as Tata and Reliance, the government wants it to work with stodgy HAL.
He told the crew he had three accomplices, whom he later identified to police as "the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost".During a visit by Nicolas Sarkozy to Brasília, Brazil said it was negotiating to buy 36 Rafale fighter jets for $2.2 billion from France.
In 2013 its space agency, CNES, together with Dassault Aviation, a French firm, and German and Spanish partners, will test a satellite-launching rocket that attaches to the Rafale fighter jet.
France has not sold a single Rafale overseas, and until this week the plane's future looked iffy.
But the cost of that, let alone of developing an entirely new European warplane, could prove prohibitively expensive; the current three Eurofighter, Dassault's Rafale and the Gripen are costing a total of about $100 billion.
Mr Sarkozy let Muammar Qaddafi pitch his tent in a garden next to the Elysée and tried to sell him (and other dodgy leaders) the same Rafale fighters that the French are now using in Libya.
The Chinese are interested in French Mirage and Rafale fighters, which struggle against American competition in other export markets, and in Germany's Leopard tanks.
The Rafale switches more easily into a ground-attack mode.After seeing the Rafale rejected repeatedly over the past decade, by the Netherlands, South Korea, Singapore, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates and Switzerland, the French were desperate to win a contract.
Lord Drayson claimed he had a "Plan B", but this was a poor option either converting the new Eurofighter Typhoon being made by Britain, Germany, Italy and Spain for use on carriers or, worse, buying French Rafale jets.A bust-up would have dealt a serious blow to Anglo-American co-operation on defence equipment.
A deal for $12 billion or more to buy 126 Rafale fighters from France is slowly drawing towards completion.
