BERLIN -- The German government will sell some of its shares in state-owned companies to help pay the cost of compensating former Nazi slaves and forced laborers, a top official said Wednesday.
A deal reached Tuesday by U.S. and German negotiators will establish a $5.2 billion fund to compensate hundreds of thousands of people forced to work for the Nazis and German companies during World War II.After months of negotiations, the breakthrough came after the German government said it would increase its $1.6 billion offer, augmenting $2.6 billion already pledged by industry.
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said Wednesday that details of the agreement will be made public Friday when all sides meet in Berlin. He refused to tell reporters how much the government was raising its offer.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and the U.S. envoy to the talks, Deputy Treasury Secretary Stuart Eizenstat, will attend the Friday meeting, chief German negotiator Otto Lambsdorff told Berlin's Inforadio Wednesday.
Schroeder said he had exchanged letters with President Clinton discussing German firms' legal immunity from lawsuits in the United States in return for forming the fund. Schroeder said he was "truly satisfied" with the scope of the immunity guarantees.
The $5.2 billion offer matches demands made by lawyers earlier this week -- including the establishment of a $520 million fund by U.S. companies that had German operations during the war, U.S. attorney Michael Hausfeld said in a conference call.
To finance the deal, the German government will sell off parts of government-owned businesses, Finance Minister Hans Eichel told German ZDF television Wednesday. He said money would not come from the budget, but that the government-run businesses should "properly participate" in the fund because they also used forced labor during World War II.
Germany has already made about $60 billion in payments for war crimes, but there has never been compensation for the estimated 12 million enslaved and forced workers. Anywhere from 1.5 million to 2.3 million people still alive would be eligible for compensation, mostly non-Jews living in eastern Europe.
Lambsdorff said forced laborers would be paid between $2,600 and $3,125, while slave laborers who were held in concentration camps would receive about $7,800.
The spokesman for the industry fund, Wolfgang Gibowski, said he expected the German parliament to pass a law creating the fund by early summer, allowing payments to begin.
Thousands of the survivors are dying each year, and all sides agreed that any agreement would need to come quickly.