An agreement in principle has been reached on financing for the cost overruns for the A400M military transport plane, Reuters quoted a source familiar with the negotiations as telling it today. Delays and problems in developing the West's largest turbo-prop engines have pushed Europe's largest defence project billions of euros over budget, forcing seven European NATO nations to step in with a mixture of direct aid and guarantees. Procurement officials from buyer nations met EADS chief executive Louis Gallois at the German defence ministry. The A400M was ordered in 2003 to meet a looming shortfall in military and humanitarian airlift capacity among seven nations -- Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Spain and Turkey.