While no new figures were announced, sources close to the talks say the Germans are now offering $5.3 billion and the lawyers are now seeking around $8 billion.
“The gap has narrowed,” Gideon Taylor, executive director of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, told JTA after the talks ended Wednesday.
Taylor and Israel Singer, the secretary-general of the World Jewish Congress, met Tuesday with German President Johannes Rau to discuss ways in which Germany can deal with the legacy of the Holocaust.
Rau agreed that Germany would issue a statement of moral responsibility that would accompany any settlement reached in the slave-labor talks.