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BERLIN, Sept 2 | Fri Sep 2, 2011 2:35am EDT
(Reuters) - German airline Lufthansa should consider investing in TAP, Portugal's troubled state carrier which is slated for privatisation, the indebted country's Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho was quoted saying in a newspaper.
"Lufthansa would be very well advised if it would develop the market in South America and Africa together with the Portuguese airline TAP," Coelho was quoted as saying in Friday's Handelsblatt newspaper.
"I could imagine that Lufthansa is following our privatisation programme attentively in which Tap, too, is being privatised. Surely that would be a good investment for a German company," he added.
Air Portugal (TAP) and several other state companies are slated for privatisation this year as part of Portugal's financial recovery plan.
Coelho reiterated he did not see eurozone bonds as a solution for the currency zone's problems, but said the European Union needed to more towards closer integration. (Reporting by Annika Breidthardt)
http://www.reuters.c...E7K206N20110902
