By AFP | Mar 10, 2010
Lithuania aims to settle Jewish property issue by July: PM
Lithuania aims by July to settle the vexed issue of compensation for Jewish communal property seized by the Nazis in World War II and kept by the Soviets, Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius said Wednesday.
"I hope during the spring session, which started today, we will be able to have an agreement in parliament on that law," Kubilius told AFP, noting that lawmakers will be in sitting until July.
In July 2009, Kubilius' centre-right coalition agreed a compensation package worth a total of 128 million litas (37 million euros, 50 million dollars).
He had aimed to get final parliamentary approval for the deal last year, but Lithuania's lawmakers got bogged down by votes on belt-tightening measures to tackle the Baltic state's deep economic crisis.
Kubilius, who took office in November 2008 after beating a centre-left government in a general election, noted that there was cross-party support for the package.
He underlined that the law had been drafted by the previous government."I don't see any reason why there will be any problem in parliament," he added.Last year Lithuanian Jewish groups said that the sum -- worth only around one-third of the value of the expropriated property -- fell far short of what they wanted.But they nonetheless hailed it as an important step towards settling the long-running issue.
The debate over Jewish property has endured since Lithuania broke from the crumbling Soviet Union in 1990.Synagogues were returned several years ago. But there was no blanket deal for dozens of other former communal buildings such as schools, and the financial package is meant to settle that.
Payouts are meant to begin in 2012, with the process due to end in 2022.Pre-war Lithuania was home to 220,000 Jews. Vilnius was then a cultural hub known as the "Jerusalem of the North".
But 95 percent perished during the 1941-1944 German occupation at the hands of the Nazis and local collaborators. During five decades of post-war Soviet rule, Jewish property which had been seized by the Nazis was kept by the state. Today, some 5,000 Jews live in Lithuania, according to the local Jewish community.
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