The German government has said it wants to conclude all outstanding claims against German industry related to Nazi injustice by the year two-thousand.

The Chancellery Minister, Bodo Hombach, said more than seventy billion dollars had so far been paid out and more funding would be available.

Last month Mr Hombach was appointed by the Chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, to chair talks with German firms which are facing a series of lawsuits from Holocaust victims in the United States over their use of slave labour during the Nazi era.

The leader of the Jewish Community in Germany, Ignatz Bubis, criticised the deadline and said the government could not dictate an end to the debate.

Mr Bubis said the debate would probably go on until the year two thousand and thirty, until the last survivors had died.

Historians say Nazi Germany forced as many as 12 million people into slave labour, most of them from Eastern Europe.