More than 50 years after the end of World War II, the German government appears ready to compensate Jewish survivors of the Holocaust who live in eastern Europe.

Jonathan Charles reports on rising tensions over Holocaust compensation (1'01")

Officials in Bonn have agreed in principle to pay pensions to several thousand Jews living mainly in Russia and Ukraine.

Bonn will make three payments a year into a special fund to be administered by the American-based Jewish Claims Conference.

The conference will then pay monthly pensions to 20,000 east European Holocaust survivors.

Talks, which have lasted for months, nearly collapsed in November as Bonn firmly opposed making the regular monthly payments which east European survivors had demanded.

The average age of the concentration camp survivors is about 80.

Over the past 50 years, Bonn has paid about £30bn to Jewish survivors of Nazi persecution living in the West.

Those in the East were barred from reparations because of Cold War politics.

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