Brussels - Lufthansa is to take over Belgium's airline, Brussels Airlines, the two carriers said Monday in Brussels, just over two weeks after confirming they were in merger talks.

In a first step, the big German airline is to pay 65 million euros to acquire 45 per cent of Brussels Airlines from SN Holding. Lufthansa can acquire the rest in 2011.

Lufthansa had earlier confirmed it was in takeover talks.

Brussels, which emerged from the 2001 bankruptcy of the airline Sabena and later merged with Virgin Express, has a workforce of about 3,000 and carried 5.8 million passengers last year.

It operates mainly within Europe and on long-range routes to Africa.

Lufthansa, which last year completed its takeover of Swiss, is much larger, carrying 63 million passengers last year. It has 100,000 employees.

The German company is currently viewed as a front-runner to acquire Austrian Airlines and the Scandinavian airline SAS too.

A Swedish newspaper, Dagens Industri, reported Monday that the Norwegian government had dropped its past opposition to a sale of SAS, which is a partly state-owned company run jointly by Denmark, Norway and Sweden. (dpa)