Poland has set the standard for military procurement for NATO's future eastern members, US aeronautics giant Lockheed Martin, the winner of a 3.5-billion-dollar (euro) Polish tender for fighter jets, said on Thursday.

In an interview with AFP, a senior representative of Lockheed Martin in Poland, George Standridge, said the tender, Eastern Europe's biggest to date which pitted three global defence giants against each other, had been carried out in an exemplary way.

"Certainly this is a momentous decision on a number of levels. This was a very well-structured tender and it does set standards for other NATO aspirants," Standridge said.

The Fort Worth, Texas-based company won the order for 48 of its F-16 fighter jets last week after a fierce battle with British-Swedish consortium BAE Systems-SAAB with its Jas-39 Gripen and France's Dassault Aviation with its Mirage 2000-5. Standridge said that the Polish authorities' selection procedure had differed from previous eastern European tenders by clearly defining their requirements and their budget and by carrying out the tender in a transparent way.

"This set the standards because it does exactly that," he said. But both of Lockheed Martin's competitors complained that Warsaw's choice had been politically motivated by the hope of winning the strategic support of the United States rather than on the merit of the offers.

Standridge said the Polish decision put Lockheed Martin on a sound competitive footing in emerging defence markets in central and eastern Europe, which have opened up due to NATO's decision to let in new members.

"This establishes a strong footprint for F-16s in central Europe," he said.

He declined to say how many new planes Lockheed expected to sell in the region, but said the company estimated it would sell between 250-300 F-16s worldwide in the coming years.

"We think there's probably 250-300 more F-16s worldwide," he said.

Poland needs the planes to replace its obsolete MiG-21 and Mig-29 planes and bring its military standards up to those of NATO, which it joined in 1999.

Experts say that of seven new ex-communist countries invited to join NATO at its November summit in Prague, only three or four, notably Romania and Bulgaria, which are strategically placed on the Black Sea, are significant markets for fighter jets.

The Czech Republic and Hungary, which joined transatlantic military alliance at the same time as Poland, have both experienced difficulties replacing their fighter jet fleets.

Five out of six competitors, including Lockheed Martin, pulled out of the Czech Republic's estimated two-billion dollar tender for 24 modern fighter aircraft due to concerns about the way the tender procedure was run.

Prague eventually chose the only remaining plane - the Swedish-British Jas-39 Gripens - to replace its ageing fleet of Russian-built MiG-21 planes.

It then ditched the buy due to the heavy economic cost of floods which hit the central European country over the summer.

Hungary also chose the Jas-39 Gripens over the F-16, agreeing in late 2001 to lease 14 of them, at a cost of 108 billion forints (458 million euros, 474 million dollars), excluding weapons.

However, contract negotiations have since been bogged down.

With acknowledgement to Sapa-AFP and BC-Poland-Military.