Handelsblatt.com:. .. .German Parliament Approves Military Airbus Funding. .. .HB/sms BERLIN. Germany's parliamentary budget committee on Wednesday approved the release of the first tranche of funding for the country's consignment of Airbus A400M military transport aircraft, meaning that work can now commence on the 18 billion euro project. . .. .Germany was the last of the eight NATO partners involved to approve funding for the A400M. Its order for 73 of a total 196 aircraft to be built, the largest from a single nation, has a total value of 9.1 billion euros. . .. .Of that sum, only 5.1 billion euros, covering the cost of 40 planes, has been approved by parliament. It is included in the 2002 budget. Wednesday's vote means that this first amount can be released. . .. .Budget experts from the conservative-led opposition and, until yesterday, from the Greens, junior partner in the country's Social Democrat-led coalition government, had threatened to vote against granting Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping's request for the funds to be freed up. Although there was general cross-party acceptance of a need to procure the 73 aircraft, these experts objected on procedural grounds to a commitment that Scharping had made, in a supplementary declaration to the procurement order signed in January, to compensate Germany's partners in the event that parliament did not approve the remaining 4.4 billion euros of funding. . .. .That dispute has clearly been resolved. On Wednesday, Scharping said he had struck a deal with opposition parties, putting an end to months of constitutional wrangling. He also said he was sure that Germany's partners would accept the deal. . .. . But Britain, one of the fiercest critics of Germany's equivocation over A400M funding, was not willing to confirm that it had relaxed its demands. A spokesman for the Defence Ministry in London repeated the official line that Britain had asked Germany to make a firm financial commitment by the end of March. He said the British government was in regular contact with its seven partners in the project and all concerned would discuss the German decision at a meeting next Friday.