March 04, 2007	Sunday	Safar 14, 1428

FRANKFURT, March 3: The co-chief executives of Airbus parent company EADS said there was no alternative to thousands of job cuts at the troubled European planemaker and warned that strikes would only make things worse.

In separate interviews published on Saturday, France’s Louis Gallois and Germany’s Thomas Enders stood by restructuring plans designed to save 2.1 billion euros ($2.8bn) annually from 2010 in the face of delays to new planes and a weak dollar.

“I am ready for talks to find out what the best solutions are to reach our goals but the limits are fixed,” Gallois, who is also CEO of Airbus, told Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

“We can talk about how we will reduce our internal and external staff by 10,000, and we will talk about how the plants will be sold and how partners will be involved,” he said.

Airbus plans to sell three factories in Germany and France and is looking for partners for three others.

Gallois said Airbus had spoken informally to two partners and said he did not rule a complete takeover of individual plants by such partners. Asked whether Italy’s Alenia was one of them, he answered: “Why not?” Enders warned against longer strikes after staff at three German plants slated for full or partial sale stopped work this week. Three French unions have called a strike for March 6.

“We are highly vulnerable on this point,” Enders said in an interview to Germany's Focus magazine. “Longer strikes would hit us in a weak spot and set us back further.” Both EADS co-CEOs criticised infighting at the European aerospace group and the duplication of functions which exists to ensure Franco-German peace, saying they had hindered operations.

“Both Louis Gallois and I would rather be the only chief in the ring,” Enders said. “Maybe one day the dual leadership will come to an end.” Gallois said of the management arrangement: “We can live with it, but for the future we must bring about that EADS and Airbus become a normal company. We are not that yet today.” —Reuters