Air France-KLM Chairman Jean-Cyril Spinetta said on Thursday his his company had still not decided whether or not to submit a bid for a controlling stake in Italian carrier Alitalia.
The French-Dutch airline, he said during a press conference, ''is currently not looking for a local (European) partner''.
Air France-KLM, Spinetta explained, was ''monitoring the evolution'' of the situation at both Alitalia and Spain's Iberia ''in order to be in a position to give the most adequate response''.
''Before seeking a local partner we must sure what we want... Any operation would have to create value for our shareholders,'' he added.
Candidates to acquire the Treasury's 49.9% stake in Alitalia have dwindled to three after Aeroflot Russian Airlines announced on Monday that it would not be making an offer and the Alitalia board earlier this month said that a consortium headed by former Constitutional Court justice Antonio Baldassarre did not have the ''necessary requisites'' to present an offer.
Aside from Air France, the remaining potential buyers are German carrier Lufthansa, which also has not said whether it will make a bid, and Italy's biggest private carrier Air One, which is very interested in Alitalia and has assembled a team of banks to back its offer.
Alitalia had been expected to announce its future partner this month, but the airline's board decided on Tuesday to push back the deadline to mid-December and gave candidates until the end of next week to present non-binding offers.
Observers believe that Air France-KLM and Luthansa have not declared their intentions because they are engaged in a game of cat-and-mouse in regards to both Alitalia and Iberia, with each waiting for the other to show their cards.
The Wall Street Journal on Thursday quoted sector expert Peter Morris who said that neither the French or German airline ''wants to see someone else get in there and make a success of it at Alitalia... But they can't seem to convince themselves it's worth the money''.
The financial daily defined Alitalia as ''the airline nobody wants to buy'' but added that Europe's biggest airlines were interested in the troubled carrier because ''Alitalia is a pawn in a larger game over who can draw Europe's high-paying passengers'' who range from ''rich Milanese bankers to wealthy tourists headed to Rome or Tuscany''.
The Italian government decided at the end of last year to sell most if not all of the Treasury's 49.9% stake in Alitalia.
An attempt to auction the stake failed this summer after all bidders dropped out because of the conditions imposed by the Treasury.
Maurizio Prato was then called in as CEO of the troubled airline to negotiate the direct sale of the Treasury's stake.
Many pundits see Air France and Air One as the favorites to take over Alitalia.
This because Air France, Europe's largest airline after incorporating KLM, already has a 2% stake in Alitalia and is its partner in the SkyTeam international alliance, while AP Holding-Air One would ensure maintaining Alitalia's Italian 'character'.
Alitalia has not posted an operating profit since 1998 and its net debt currently stands at more than 1 billion euros.
In May, Alitalia announced a full-year net loss of 625.6 million euros, 458 million more than previously indicated.
However, last week Alitalia said it posted a pre-tax loss of 58 million euros in the third quarter of 2007, a drop of some nine million euros from the same period last year.
Alitalia's net financial debt at the end of September stood at 1.171 billion euros, compared to 1.105 billion euros a month earlier.
