The US Ambassador to Croatia, William R. Kohorst, said on Friday that he was "hopeful" that the delivery of F-16 fighter jets sold by Israel to Croatia would go forward after the US Congress approves the deal within the next 15 days.

“We continue to be very supportive of Croatia’s attempt to modernise their aircraft with NATO inter-operable planes, so we are pushing forward with getting this approval done. As you may have heard, we submitted to our Congress the TPT approval process, which is the next step in getting this done. There’s a 15-day waiting period, we’re hopeful that at the end of the 15 days we’ll get approved and the process will move forward,” Kohorst told reporters at the official opening of renovated storage facilities of Croatia’s interior ministry in Zagreb on Friday.

On Wednesday, the State Department said they had formally asked the US Congress for the approval of the so-called Third Party Transfer (TPT) which regulates any re-sale of American-made arms to allow the delivery of twelve Israeli F-16 C/D aircraft bought by Croatia in a 3.1 billion kuna ($477 million) deal in March.

The aircraft, between 25 and 30 years old, are intended to replace the outdated Soviet-made MiG-21 aircraft currently used by the Croatian Air Force. Last week, Israeli media reported that the Trump administration is blocking the delivered of jets, as the US insists that the planes must be stripped of modernised electronics installed by the Israeli Air Force.

According to TPT rules, any American-made military equipment originally purchased by an ally country must be returned to its original state before being transferred to a third party for the sale to be approved by the US.

Asked by reporters if the United States had been warning Israel for two years about the necessary technical specifications of the deal, and whether Croatia was aware of them, Kohorst said all parties involved were timely informed about the details, and called for patience in getting the deal finalised.

“I don’t know if we’ve been ‘warning’ them. We’ve just been explaining the process for the last two years, and Croatia was aware, and Israel was aware, of the process. So we are now going through that. I’m a little confused as to why there’s this difference right now. But I believe it will get worked out and we’ll see this transaction occur. But I would like to encourage everybody to be a little patient, that may take a little more time, but it’s more important to get this done right, than to get it done fast,” Kohorst said.

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