GERMAN GOVERNMENT REPRESENTATIVE OTTO LAMBSDORFF SPEAKS TO REPORTERS, 1999-10-07 (photo)

Otto Lambsdorff, the chief representative of the German government, speaks to reporters after talks in Washington October 7 in which German firms and their government offered 6 billion marks (U.S.$3.3 billion) to compensate hundreds of thousands of Nazi-era slaves and forced laborers. Lawyers pressing suits against the companies immediately denounced the offer as miserly and disgusting. Lambsdorff told reporters that it had been hard enough to raise 4 billion marks from the companies, some of which did not use slave labor, and others of which share little more than a name with the companies of the 1940s. "This is a very substantive sum...but we never thought that our offer would be accepted on the first day," Lambsdorff said. MMR