Mifram, an engineering company with a security division, was reported to be in "advanced negotiations" with the French Interior Ministry, according to the Israeli business magazine TheMarker. Mifram's stake in the $10 million deal would be $1 million, the magazine reported.

The Kiryat Bialik-based firm is competing with three other companies for the deal, and representatives for all the companies have been invited to demonstrate their products, the report said.

Representatives of Mifram, along with its competitors for this deal and some 40 other Israeli security companies, were in Paris this week for the 15th annual Milipol Worldwide Exhibition of Internal State Security. According to conference organizers, companies from 41 countries were expected to attend the confab, along with almost 25,000 visitors from 130 countries.

Mifram is just one of the Israeli companies that could stand to benefit from the international meeting, Israeli officials said ahead of the conference this week.

In all, the export of safety and security products and services from Israel this year is expected to increase 15 percent over last year, TheMarker quoted Israel Export and International Cooperation Institute chief David Arzi as saying.

The safety and security industry in Israel will be worth about $1.15 billion by the end of 2007, Arzi said.

Meanwhile, at the Association of the United States Army's annual meeting in Washington at the same time, Israel Aerospace Industries Ltd. Chairman Yair Shamir voiced interest in shopping for an American defense company, the Israeli business newspaper Globes reported.

"We aren't exploiting the U.S. market in full and we should do more," Shamir said, according to the report. Some 80 percent of the company's business in the United States is civilian, though it is one of the largest defense companies in Israel.

"The most effective way, but probably also the hardest, is through the acquisition of an American defense company, which would enable us to expand sales. Everyone knows that we're looking, and we've even hired a company to help in the search," he said.

IAI is not new to U.S. operations -- the company owns a subsidiary in Starkville, Miss., called Stark Aerospace, that manufactures the Hunter unmanned aerial vehicle.

However, navigating an acquisition deal can be complicated: "We don't want to repeat the precedent set by Check Point," Shamir said, referring the 2005 attempt by the Israeli company to acquire Maryland-based Sourcefire Inc. In March 2006, after a protracted process, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States nixed the deal.

A reporter for Defense News in Tel Aviv got an advance look at some of the wares Israeli companies, including IAI, would be displaying at the Washington meeting. Her conclusion: "A preview of locally developed technologies and systems authorized for display at ... (the) conference ... reveals the extent to which force protection is driving Israeli modernization plans."

"Across the spectrum of combat disciplines, force protection has become a necessary prerequisite for (Ministry of Defense) development funding. Once developed, defense and industry sources here say, issues of affordability invariably determine which projects ultimately end up in Israel's inventory," the Defense News report said.

This includes, according to the report, robotics that convert bulldozers into unmanned ground vehicles, electro-optical fire detection systems and "a vehicle-mounted (signal) jammer designed to deny enemy use of selected portions of the radio frequency spectrum," to name a few.

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