West Germany is ready to pay $500,000,000 in reparations to Israel, which is just one-half of what the Israel Government demanded, it was reported today by Davar, leading Israel newspaper, which attributed the report to “reliable sources.”
Addressing the two-day national conference here of the Association of Central European Settlers, Dr. George Landauer, who is leaving today for London to participate in talks of Jewish groups regarding the reparations negotiations with Germany, said that the second phase of the Israeli-German reparations discussions will be a short one.
“If the Germans propose a sum considered inadequate by Israel, no further talks will be conducted,” he stated, “but if the sum offered is acceptable, then a general agreement on principles will be signed and details will be worked out later by experts from both sides.”
The conference was also addressed by Dr. M. Kreutzberger, of the Jewish Agency office in Munich. He reported that 700,000,000 marks worth of Jewish property has already been returned in West Germany to private Jewish owners. He reported that in the British zone of Germany about 17,000 of the 50,000 Jewish claims have been settled.
A Foreign Office spokesman warned here today that German-Israeli negotiations on Israel’s reparations claims would not be renewed automatically on receipt of a reply here from the West German Government. The spokesman said no reply had been received from Germany on Israel’s demands for a definite, firm reparations offer and no date had been fixed for renewal of the talks at The Hague.
(The New York Times today reported from Bonn that experts in the West German Federal Government have worked out in general terms a program for restitutions to Israel which, provided Chancellor Konrad Adenauer approves it, they hope will satisfy the Israeli Government and make possible a renewal of the negotiations that were broken off at The Hague in April. “How much money is involved in the new offer could not be ascertained. However, the new program worked out by Federal Government experts this week is understood to meet many of the Israeli demands regarding swift payment.” the report said.)
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