U.S. set to refurbish planes for Taiwan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Navy said Friday it had reached a tentative deal to refurbish 12 maritime patrol aircraft for a long-awaited transfer to Taiwan as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in China.

Taiwan signed the formal paperwork in December 2007 for the surplus P-3C Orion aircraft, said Lieutenant Clay Doss, a Navy spokesman. The turboprop-driven P-3C is designed for hunting submarines.

"A tentative agreement has been reached" for a $1.3 billion refurbishing job by Lockheed Martin Corp, though a contract has not been awarded yet, he said.

The progress toward supplying the aircraft was announced as Clinton was arriving in China for her first visit as President Barack Obama's top diplomat. Earlier in the week, Kyodo News Agency had said the P-3C's were now on track for delivery to Taiwan in 2013, citing a senior Taiwan legislative aide.

China was the last stop on a week-long tour of Asia that earlier took Clinton to Tokyo, Jakarta and Seoul.

China strongly opposes U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, which Beijing has regarded as a renegade province since the 1949 communist victory in a civil war.

Doss said the P-3C aircraft, which are no longer in production, would be refurbished in the United States by Lockheed, the Pentagon's No. 1 supplier. They are being stored at the so-called Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group in Tucson, Arizona, he said.

A Lockheed spokesman, Jeffery Adams, referred calls about the deal to the Pentagon's Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA), which handles U.S. government-to-government arms deals.

Charles Taylor, a DSCA spokesman, said he had no information on when a formal contract for the refurbishing work might be signed.

The P-3C antisubmarine warfare planes were part of a landmark arms package that former President George W. Bush approved for possible sale to Taiwan in April 2001.

The U.S. government is required by a 1979 law to provide Taiwan sufficient arms to defend itself from attack. Successive administration, both Democratic and Republican, have sought to manage the flow to minimize fallout with China, a major trading partner, fellow veto-wielding U.N. Security Council member and key purchaser of U.S. bonds and other debt instruments.

China broke off high-level contacts with the U.S. military in October after the Bush administration informed Congress of a possible $6.5 billion arms package for Taiwan.

Obama's top intelligence official told Congress on February 12 that the United States must continue to "make sure that military adventures are unattractive" on sides of the Taiwan Strait.

"Taiwan should not be so defenseless that it feels it has to do everything that China says," said National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair, a retired admiral who once headed the U.S. Pacific Command. "On the other hand, China cannot be so overwhelming that it can bully Taiwan."

(Reporting by Jim Wolf; Editing by Richard Chang, Bernard Orr)