Japan Expected To Compromise On Jet Fighter --- U.S. Aides Expect Tokyo To Give Project to Team From Both the Countries
TOKYO -- Japan is preparing to settle a prickly trade issue by turning a multibillion-dollar jet-fighter project into a joint venture between Japanese and U.S. aerospace concerns.</br></br>Although a formal decision is, at the least, weeks away, U.S. officials expect the Japan Defense Agency to award its Fighter Support Experimental, or FSX, project to a team of Japanese companies led by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd., with either McDonnell Douglas Corp. or General Dynamics Corp. as a U.S. partner.</br></br>The joint-development plan is a compromise between the Mitsubishi group's initial proposal to build the FSX alone and a U.S. congressional demand for Japan to buy an off-the-shelf U.S. model as a move toward reducing the U.S. trade deficit.</br></br>Each of those proposals would create political problems. The Pentagon has expressed concern that a go-it-alone Japanese effort would be a wasteful duplication of allied resources, while Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone has insisted that Japan's security should be treated separately from its troublesome trade problems.</br></br>Now, "there will be some kind of cooperation, but we still don't know how," said Motoo Shiina, a parliament member involved in defense affairs. Japanese politicians still speak warily of the FSX because some sensitive questions on participants' roles haven't yet been resolved.