BUSINESS and other links between Kent and Virginia are being forged by a trailblazing pact sealed in the United States.

Kent is the first UK county to sign a so-called Memorandum of Understanding with an American state.

It spells out seven aims, including the fostering of stronger trade and business relationships, encouraging education, social, tourism and cultural co-operation and setting up aviation links between Virginia and Kent International Airport, Manston.

Bosses estimate that extra tourism from Virginia and other parts of the US will be worth an extra £100million to Kent over three years, creating dozens of jobs.

A VIP signing ceremony in Richmond, the state capital, followed a two year courtship between Kent County Council and various Virginian organisations, including New Kent County.

KCC officials have played a key part in galvanising the state federal commission’s approach to the 400th anniversary commemoration in 2007.

In a ceremony covered by local TV stations, Sir Sandy Bruce-Lockhart, leader of Kent County Council, signed the pact in Virginia's 19th century executive mansion with Mark R Warner, the governor, and a possible Democratic Presidential candidate in 2008.

Sir Sandy spoke of his family's links with the state. As a boy, he spent four years there while his father served as a diplomat at the British Embassy. His hero is the Virginian Thomas Jefferson, a founding father of the American Constitution.

He said Kent and Virginia shared many things, including a strong agricultural base and attractive countryside. It also shared the challenges of declining manufacturing and farming industries.

He said: "We want to use 2007 not just as a single event but to build continuous ties between us long into the future."

Introducing Gvernor Warner by his traditional title of His Excellency, Sir Sandy said Virginia had a wonderful history at the centre of democracy.

Governor Warner said Jamestown represented the birthplace of the great American experience and the start of 400 years of democracy. Many of those ideals had been brought over form the UK.

Governor Warner, a mulit-millionaire businessman who made his money from the mobile phone explosion, also said: "My hope is we can welcome our friends from Kent to Virginia and New Kent County over the next 24 months and that we can send a number of Virginia-based delegates to visit and do business in Kent."