Israel has received a $25,000,000 loan from West Germany which has promised another loan of the same amount before the end of the current fiscal year, Meariv, the leading evening newspaper in Israel, reported today.
According to the report, the loan is outside of the West German-Israel reparations agreement and was made in fulfilment of a promise given by Chancellor Konrad Adenauer to Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion at their 1960 meeting in New York City. The promise was understood to be for a $500,000,000 loan to be made over a period of 10 years.
The daily declared that sources in the West German Treasury Department said that the Chancellor’s promise was not an unconditional assurance that the total loan would be made. Within the general framework of the commitment, the Bonn officials were reported to have said, the matter will be reviewed each year on the basis of specific development projects to be submitted by Israel.
The amount of the annual loan is not to exceed $50,000,000 and the grant each year will be conditioned by the projects submitted by Israel and by West Germany’s economic situation at the time, Maariv reported.
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