The Weekend Australian newspaper said Prime Minister John Howard phoned his Singaporean counterpart Lee Hsien Loong Friday to tell him of the decision, which follows three years of lobbying for SIA access to the route.

SIA had sought to break Qantas Airways' stranglehold on the route, which it estimates is costing Australia more than US$90 million a year in lost tourism revenue.

Qantas makes about 15 percent of its profits from the Australia-Los Angeles route, where it controls about 75 percent of direct flights and United Airlines has the remaining 25 percent.

Australia suspended talks on an open skies deal with Singapore in 2003, saying it wanted to wait until the world aviation market stabilised following a series of shocks caused by SARS, terrorism and the Iraq war.

Instead of treating the issue in isolation, Canberra would now include it in a wide-ranging aviation review that will also consider foreign ownership restrictions on Qantas and foreign airlines' access into Australia, the newspaper reported.

"It's all in the melting pot," a senior minister told the newspaper.

It said SIA was disappointed "but not surprised" at the decisio

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