Greece pushing Germany on claims
ATHENS, Greece – Greece’s president called for talks as soon as possible with Berlin on long-rejected Greek claims for wartime reparations, during a meeting in Athens Thursday with his German counterpart.
Karolos Papoulias insisted at a joint news conference that Greece has never dropped its claims to reparations for the brutal 1941-44 German occupation during World War II, and restitution of a forced wartime loan to Germany.
Although an official assessment of what sum Greece could demand is pending, pro-reparations activists quote the sum of $223 billion – about half the financially-distressed country’s national debt.
“It is very hard for me to understand the German government’s refusal to discuss the issue of the loan and the reparations,” Papoulias said at an official dinner, according to a speech released by his office, saying the matter “casts a pall” over the two countries’ relations.
But German President Joachim Gauck stuck to Berlin’s longstanding argument that the matter has been settled.
“You know that I cannot adopt a different position – for example that legal means have not been exhausted – from the legal position of the German government,” Gauck said.
U.N. seeks details on Venezuela protests
GENEVA – United Nations human-rights experts demanded answers Thursday from Venezuela’s government about the use of violence and imprisonment in a crackdown on widespread demonstrations.
Six experts with the U.N.’s top human rights body wrote to the administration of President Nicolas Maduro about allegations of protesters being beaten and in some cases severely tortured by security forces, and taken to military facilities, cut off from communication and denied legal help, U.N. officials said.
“The recent violence amid protests in Venezuela need to be urgently and thoroughly investigated, and perpetrators must be held accountable,” the experts said in a joint statement.
The Venezuelan economy’s downward spiral helped trigger a wave of protests against Maduro in mid-February.
Associated Press
