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

Otto Lambsdorff (R), the chief representative of the German government speaks to reporters while U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Stuart Eizenstat listens, after talks in Washington October 7 in which German firms and their government offered 6 billion marks (US$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 1940's. MMR