Staff writer Carlos Ghosn knows exactly what he wants and precisely how he is going to achieve it. Handed the massive task of turning Nissan Motor Co.'s fortunes around, the Brazilian-born executive of French car manufacturer Renault also realizes that simply cutting costs, jobs, suppliers and reducing the number of lines that the company turns out is not enough; Ghosn wants everyone connected with the firm to know their combined goal. "The most important task in communication is to give an objective, a purpose that everybody shares," he said in a recent interview with the radio station InterFM. "If there is no purpose that they share, then it is very difficult to gather everybody and ask them to make the effort to allow the company to overcome the difficulties." The "difficulties" that Ghosn -- dubbed "Le Cost Killer" -- has inherited include interest-bearing liabilities of 1.4 trillion yen. To turn Nissan back into a viable carmaker that competes in markets all over the world means the firm will have to slash 21,000 jobs, close down three of its plants and two run by its affiliates, do away with nine vehicle platforms and nearly half of its suppliers -- all by 2002. "I think that remembering past victories is important because you need confidence -- confidence in yourself, confidence in the people around you. And at times, the challenge is so big that you need to build strength in yourself to be able to overcome this challenge," he said. "But at the same time, if you limit yourself to your past glories, then you will not move forward. It has to be a balance between recognizing the past victories, understanding them, gaining confidence from them, but at the same time taking a look at the future and seeing that the necessity to change is the only way to overcome future challenges." The future, as the hard-hitting Nissan chief operating officer sees it, is one in which Nissan and Renault combine their skills to ensure that both firms increase their market penetration as allies. Ghosn dismisses suggestions that it is a weak coalition. "The alliance between Renault and Nissan has a lot of potential; obviously we have a lot of difficulties to overcome, the first of which is to revive Nissan. But it is extremely important to establish a balanced relationship between the two companies," he said. In terms of specific global targets, the two companies are looking closely at India, where neither firm has a presence but which Ghosn said is nonetheless "a very important market," and China, where both have a small presence. In addition, each firm intends to use the areas in which the other is stronger to leverage a larger presence. Nissan intends to get a bigger share of the market in South America by using Renault's established infrastructure, while the French carmaker hopes to make inroads into Mexico, where Nissan controls 20 percent of the market. "This will be a win-win situation," Ghosn said. "Where both companies are absent, we will have common projects; where one firm is present and the other is absent, the company that is absent will leverage the presence of the other to go faster and to do it in a more effective way." Another area in which both firms plan to pool their resources is work on the car of the future, including the incorporation of more energy-efficient engines and design of environmentally friendly vehicles. Surprisingly, however, Ghosn refuses to rule out alliances, either temporary or more lasting, with other car firms in the search for tomorrow's technology. "Even the fact that Nissan and Renault are working together will not be sufficient for certain developments, like fuel cells, because of the amount of investment and because of the technological challenge. And from time to time you will see alliances between competitors in research to try to do it as fast as possible and in the most effective way possible," he said. "Everybody knows that no matter how big you are, you can no longer do it all alone," he added. "And we are totally open to cooperation on specific projects." Looking to the future of Nissan as a company, Ghosn expressed his belief that the company's "ReNaISSANce" project to get the carmaker back on the road to a healthy future will be a success, even though competition between manufacturers is likely to intensify, and, he added, "Our main preoccupation is fixing Nissan, and nothing else, as we're not really in a position today to give a lesson to anybody."The interview will be aired Sunday at 7:03 a.m.