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NATION : Ueberroth Eastern Deal Collapses

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<i> From Times wire service</i> s

The $464-million deal to sell strike-bound Eastern Airlines to former baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth collapsed today and TWA’s Carl Icahn quickly expressed renewed interest in buying the troubled airline.

Ueberroth and Phil Bakes, president of Eastern, called a news conference in New York “to explain why their efforts to complete a purchase of Eastern Airlines by the Ueberroth group have been unsuccessful.”

In the meantime, Trans World Airline Inc. Chairman Carl Icahn said unions at Eastern had asked him to make a bid for the company. He said he was interested.

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“I got a call from them this morning,” Icahn told a meeting of the American Society of Newspaper Editors in Washington.

Icahn said he was not interested in competing with the Ueberroth deal, but could be interested in making a bid if that agreement fell apart.

“We’re not going to compete with the Ueberroth bid,” Icahn said. “Frankly, we don’t understand it.”

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