Prime Minister Tony Blair has written to US President George W. Bush to try to save a multibillion-dollar contract to develop an engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the Pentagon?s costliest warplane program, people familiar with the matter said on Tuesday. ?A letter went from the prime minister to the president shortly before Christmas,? said a person who asked not to be identified because of the matter?s sensitivity.

At issue is a Pentagon plan, reported last week but in the works for more than a month, to kill a $ 2.4 billion (1.4 billion pound) General Electric Co.-Rolls-Royce Plc contract to develop an alternate turbofan engine for the fighter.

Pratt & Whitney, a United Technologies Corp. unit, is building the engine that will go in the first F-35s, a family of single-engine, radar-evading aircraft being built by Lockheed Martin Corp.. Proponents of an alternate engine have cited potential savings through competition. They also describe it as a hedge against having to ground the fleet in case of engine trouble. But developing a second engine has boosted development costs, something the Pentagon is under pressure to pare.

If upheld by the White House and Congress in budget wrangling, cancelling the project could mean tens of billions of dollars in extra sales over decades for Pratt & Whitney. Saving the alternate engine program ?was the purpose of (Blair?s) letter,? another person familiar the matter said. ?We?re gratified by the efforts of our partner, Rolls-Royce, which has shared concerns with the UK government,? said Rick Kennedy, a spokesman for Cincinnati, Ohio-based GE-Aviation, a GE division.

Sales in the balance

Rolls-Royce described the alternate engine program in a statement as ?an important collaboration? between the United States and the United Kingdom but declined to comment on the Pentagon?s cancellation plan. The White House did not return a phone call seeking comment. Steve Atkins, a spokesman for the British Embassy in Washington, said: ?We don?t comment on confidential government-to-government correspondence.?

Blair, Bush?s staunchest foreign partner on Iraq, is well-placed to save the GE-Rolls-Royce engine. Britain has committed at least $ 2 billion to co-development of the F-35, the most of any of the project?s eight foreign partners.

GE and Rolls-Royce, one of Britain?s premier brands, won the $2.4 billion development contract in July. It is due to run through September 2013. The big money is in spares and maintenance over the engines? projected 40-year lifespan. ?Any letter from Blair is likely to get the president?s very close attention,? said Loren Thompson of the Arlington, Virginia-based Lexington Institute, a research group with close ties to the Pentagon and military contractors.

If the Pentagon sticks to its decision, GE probably would exit the business of building tactical fighter engines, Thompson said. The F-35 is due to be the Pentagon?s biggest purchase ever at an estimated $ 256 billion. The Pentagon plans to buy as many as 2,480 in three variants for the US Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps and the British Royal Navy.

In addition, hundreds or thousands may be sold overseas, generating demand for at least 4,000 engines over coming decades, with each engine costing several million dollars. The F-135 co-development partners include Britain, the United States, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey, Canada, Australia, Denmark and Norway.

Jim WOLF

GLOBAL CAUSE

Brown urges G8 states to back education drive

■ Chancellor Gordon Brown has urged the world?s richest countries to work towards providing free education for all children by 2007. Brown said he would use a meeting of Group of Eight finance ministers in Moscow next month to press his counterparts to help improve health care and education in developing countries. ?Our mission should be universal free education for every child, universal health care for every family,? Brown wrote in the ?Independent? yesterday. He said G8 nations should resolve to build on their promise at a summit in Scotland last July to more than double aid to Africa. He said it would cost $ 10 billion (5.7 billion pounds) each year to provide primary education to every child in the world, which in turn would reduce poverty, unemployment and illiteracy. Brown said 110 million children worldwide, the vast majority of them girls, currently receive no education. Well over two-thirds of the poorest countries charge some type of fee for primary education, he said, citing World Bank estimates. He said a new international finance facility should be launched to pay for long-term schooling. ?It should become a global cause around which the world can unite that affirms our dignity as human beings,? Brown wrote.