Austria and the United States are to sign an accord Tuesday to compensate victims of Nazi slave labor programs, in what Vienna hopes will end legal action against it over the policy.
But the agreement is clouded by the threat of continuing claims for compensation for forced laborers and from Jews who had assets seized by Nazis after Hitler annexed Austria into the Third Reich in 1938.
US Deputy Treasury Secretary Stuart Eizenstat, who will sign the agreement at a ceremony in Vienna, has said it will protect Austria against class-action suits pledged by US lawyers representing victims.
Austria has pledged to pay 6 billion schillings (436 million euros) in compensation to the some 150,000 survivors of the Nazi slave labor policies, a sum accepted by Washington. Payouts could begin this year, Vienna says.
The slave labor accord is to be signed at the Austrian chancellery by Eizenstat and Maria Schaumayer, the Austrian government's chief negotiator and representative on the issue.
But for the accord to have any force, lawyers with suits against Austria currently must be persuaded to drop them first.
Schaumayer said at the weekend she remained "wary" about forced labor agreement, according to the APA news agency.
She notably pointed out that Germany signed a similar agreement on slave labor compensation in July -- but that legal suits remained in place against Germany despite the July agreement. "Nothing has been withdrawn," she said.
New York lawyer Ed Fagan -- who played a key role in securing accords in Switzerland and Germany, is demanding that Austria pay out 12 billion schillings (876 million euros) to Jews whose assets were seized by the Nazis.
German lawyer Michael Witti, who has worked with Fagan on Nazi-era claims in other countries, said Monday that the two lawyers will sign the accord Tuesday.
But an Austrian weekly reported Saturday that a new law suit has been launched against Austria, including claims for forced labour and for property confiscated from them.
The new suit has been launched against both the state of Austria and Austrian firms by Jay R. Fialkoff, a lawyer in the New York office of Moses and Singer, according to the magazine Profil.
Austria is also to sign bilateral compensation accords with ex-communist countries where survivors still live, including Belarus, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Russia and Ukraine.
Whatever happens on the slave labor issue, Austria is committed also to begin negotiations immediately on the issue of compensation for Jews whose assets were seized by the Nazis after 1938.
Austria's Jewish community, which says such assets included some 70,000 apartments as well as personal valuables and belongings, last week agreed to a payment of some 150 million dollars for some of those assets, or about 7,500 dollar for each of the 21,000 survivors.
But they insist that sum is only the start -- in contrast to Ernst Sucharipa, the government's representative in charge of the issue, who says any further payments must come from private industry.
Austria's Jewish community leader Ariel Muzicant also wants negotiations to include compensation not only for survivors, but for descendants of Jews whose assets were stolen: some 65,000 Jews who died in the Holocaust and 115,000 others who have died since World War II -- VIENNA (AFP)
© 2000 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
