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Thursday, April 11, 2013

Greece, Germany bicker over war reparations issue





"There is no relation, nor can there be, between the (financial) reforms being carried out in Greece and the issue of German reparations," Avramopoulos said in a statement.

[...] German reparations are an issue that the Greek state brought up many years ago.

In early 2010, as Greece slid further into its debt morass, then-Prime Minister George Papandreou, a socialist, said while the issue of German World War II reparations had not been definitively resolved, Athens would not raise it during talks to tackle the country's debt crisis.

Late last year, Greece's three-party coalition government, now led by conservative Antonis Samaras, ordered a special state accounting panel to investigate whether Germany still owes war reparations.

In mid-2011, Greek hopes for compensation were dealt a blow when the European Court of Human Rights dismissed a lawsuit brought by four Greeks who, as children, had survived one of the worst single atrocities in occupied Greece, the killing of 218 people in the village of Distomo.


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