LONDON, July 11. /TASS/. France, Germany, Italy and Poland have agreed to jointly develop long-range cruise missiles, Reuters reports.

The agreement was reached on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Washington. According to the news agency, the four nations "kicked off an initiative to develop ground-launched cruise missiles with a range beyond 500 kilometers."

Meanwhile, Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper writes that the agreement is about missiles with a range of over 1,000 kilometers, which "will be able to hit Russian targets from Germany." Italian media outlets, in turn, report that the document’s goal is "to strengthen ground defenses."