The United States and Germany want an agreement by Sept. 1 in time to mark the 60th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.
Company representatives, Jewish negotiators, lawyers for Holocaust victims and government officials from eight countries participated last week.
Reaching the Sept. 1 deadline is “doable but it’s not going to be easy,” added Elan Steinberg, executive director of the World Jewish Congress.
The parties agreed on Wednesday of last week to establish two working groups. One will set rules for eligibility for payments from a compensation fund. The other will deal with ways to assure legal closure to the German companies, said Undersecretary of State Stuart Eizenstat, who presided at the conference with Bodo Hombach, chief of staff for German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.
Eizenstat, who was nominated by President Clinton last week to serve as deputy treasury secretary, said the issues still to be resolved include determining who would benefit from the compensation fund and how the fund would be operated.
As the administration’s point man on Holocaust restitution issues, Eizenstat has played a key role in recent years in helping to provide a moral and financial accounting of various countries’ financial dealings with Nazi Germany
He will continue to carry that portfolio as he moves to the No. 2 slot at the Treasury Department.