Vienna  - The Austrian government will have to rescue Austrian Airlines AG if the privatisation process fails, Transport Minister Werner Faymann said Wednesday, as he announced that there was one valid bid for the ailing flag carrier.

While Faymann left it open whether there was another, incomplete, offer, the government holding OeIAG said it would stick to its schedule and announce a decision Monday on the sale of its
42.75-per- cent stake in Austrian Airlines.

As the privatisation faced uncertainty, the price of Austrian Airlines shares crashed to 2.9 euros (3.9 dollars) on the Vienna stock market, a decline of 28.9 per cent from yesterday.

Vienna/Paris  - The privatisation of Austrian Airlines AG is facing uncertainty as Air France-KLM said Tuesday it had dropped its bid, and a newspaper reported that Deutsche Lufthansa AG had also not submitted a formal offer.

According to the Austrian newspaper Die Presse, only the Russian S7 Airlines submitted a valid bid by the deadline on Tuesday at midday.

Vienna - As Austria's parliament passed bail-out measures for banks Monday, some of the country's financials institutions said they would make use of the government's capital injections and guarantees for inter-bank credits.

All five parties in parliament unanimously approved the package worth 100 billion euros (134 billion dollars).

As the global financial crisis has led to a lack of trust between banks, the parliament also set aside 75 billion euros as government guarantees for inter-bank lending.

Vienna - Austria's Social Democratic Party (SPOe) and the mainstream conservative People's Party (OeVP) agreed Monday in Vienna to a schedule for coalition talks, after their previous joint cabinet had broken apart in July.

The economic and financial crisis and the death of far-right leader Joerg Haider on October 11 sped up the conservatives' decision to start talks with the Social Democrats, who won the September national elections with 29 per cent of the votes.