BERLIN - The chief executive of Airbus parent company EADS said Tuesday that his company was considering more acquisitions in the U.S. market despite recent problems with a tanker deal for the U.S. Air Force.

Louis Gallois told defense and security officials at a conference in Berlin that European Aeronautic Defence & Space Co. NV was looking at expanding its presence in the United States further after April's acquisition of California emergency response service company PlantCML for US$350 million (?247.45 million).

"We want to be on the American market," he told the conference, hosted by Germany's Handelsblatt newspaper. "We are looking at other acquisitions in the U.S. definitely. If we want to be in the first league for defense industry we need to be on the American market. It's a long term choice, long term strategy, and we will have up and down in this strategy but we will stick with it."

He did not go into any specifics but has said before that EADS needs to boost its presence in the U.S. to get access to the world's biggest defense market and reduce its exposure to the dollar.

EADS is vying with American rival Boeing Co. for a politically charged US$35 billion (?24.7 billion) tanker deal with its American partner Northrop Grumman Corp.

EADS and Northrop Grumman won the contract to replace 179 aerial refueling tankers in February, but Boeing later filed a protest, prompting the Pentagon to reopen the deal.

Asked whether he thought the tanker deal could still go through under the Bush administration, Gallois said simply "I don't know."

Gallois stressed the need for EADS to be in foreign markets, saying in the defense industry countries "want to buy domestic products first."

"It means we have to be in the countries, and European industry has no other choice than to invest in the markets in which we wish to sell, and the biggest market is the U.S. - it is more than 50 percent of the world market," he told the conference.

Furthermore, he added, it was necessary to commit to countries for the long-term, not only for single-shot projects. "We have to be considered as a citizen," Gallois said.

Gallois said that despite Russian's recent invasion of Georgia, EADS did not see the need to change cooperation agreements there at the moment.

"I am not a politician, and if governments are taking decisions, we'll have to see," he said. "From our perspective, I don't think it changes anything."

He also urged European countries to put more into defense spending, saying it was "much too low" in some of them, without naming them individually.

"If we want trans-Atlantic cooperation, which is a two-way street, we need to have a strong European pillar, and we have to pay for that - it's clear," he said. "If we don't take our responsibility for ensuring the defense of Europe, perhaps we'll be under the umbrella of the United States, but don't talk about cooperation. Cooperation is a two-way street."