(For whatever reasons, the price of gold leapt to $288 Friday.)

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Friday May 18 1:58 PM ET

U.S. Welcomes Court Ruling on Holocaust Suit

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States on Friday welcomed a court decision in New York amending a ruling on Holocaust-era lawsuits, saying it hoped this would quickly open the door to German pay-outs to survivors.

``We hope that the decision paves the way for Chancellor (Gerhard) Schroeder to recommend and the German Bundestag (parliament) to determine that adequate legal peace has been achieved,'' State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

He was referring to a decision by an Appeals Court on Thursday that a lower court had overstepped its authority by setting conditions that tried to change an agreement between the United States and Germany negotiated over two years.

In arguing the case, lawyers for the victims and German industry found themselves on the same side in objecting to U.S. District Judge Shirley Wohl Kram's conditional dismissal of lawsuits against German firms.

A special German foundation will not start paying 1 million Nazi slave labor survivors, most of them in Central and Eastern Europe, until all U.S. litigation against German defendants has been dismissed, a condition known as ``legal peace.''
``As soon as the Bundestag is able to consider and adopt such a determination, the process of making payments can commence,'' Boucher said in a statement.

Boucher said the U.S. government had worked with Berlin since Schroeder's government came into office in October 1998 to win a measure of justice for victims of Nazism, an effort that led to the creation of the $4.5 billion fund by the German government and German companies.

``It is in the interest of the United States that Nazi-era victims receive this gesture and recognition of the suffering they endured,'' Boucher said.

``It is further in our foreign policy interest that the effort contribute to greater harmony among member states of the transatlantic community, and that German businesses active in the United States benefit from enduring and all-embracing legal peace,'' regarding the Nazi era, he said.

``The May 17 Appeals Court decision moves us forward toward those goals.''

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