BERLIN — Germany rejects a fresh demand from Greece for reparations for crimes committed during World War I and II, saying the issue was settled long ago.
“I can repeat… that over 70 years after the end of the war and more than 25 years after the Two Plus Four Treaty (allowing German reunification) the question of reparations has been legally and politically settled,” says a foreign ministry spokesman.
A Greek parliamentary committee last year determined that Germany owes Greece at least 270 billion euros ($300 billion) for World War I damages and looting, atrocities and a forced loan during the Nazi occupation in World War II.
In addition, the Greek state accounting office has estimated that private claims for war dead and invalids could be worth an additional 107 billion euros.
Germany has repeatedly apologized for war crimes committed but argues that West German reparation payments in the 1960s settled the issue legally.
Berlin says all former claims were finally settled with the 1990 Two-Plus Four Agreement signed by the former West and East Germany as well as former Allied occupying powers the United States, Britain, France and the Soviet Union.
— AFP
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