Greece threatens to seize property, land and businesses belonging to Germany if

Angela Merkel does not agree to pay compensation for WWII occupation

   Greece has threatened Germany saying it will seize its property and land
   Comes as Athens and EU reach a stand-off over negotiations on debt crisis
   Greek Prime Minister says Germany owes his country war compensation
   Alexis Tsipras adds Angela Merkel owes his country up to 332 billion euros
   But Germany has dismissed the demands saying reparations have already been solved

Greece is threatening to seize property, land and businesses belonging to Germany if Berlin does not agree to compensate it for the Nazi occupation of the Second World War.

Prime minister Alexis Tsipras has demanded Germany pay more than £112billion in reparations.

He said previous payments did not cover demands for destroyed infrastructure, compensation for war crimes and the return of a forced loan to the Nazis.

In an emotive address to his parliament he spoke of his government pursuing its duty to history and the people who fought and gave their lives to defeat Nazism. Germany angrily dismissed the demands yesterday, saying it had paid reparations to Greece.

A spokesman for German chancellor Angela Merkel said the issue had been legally and politically resolved at that time and during the talks which led to German reunification in 1990.

But Greek politicians upped the ante with justice minister Nikos Paraskevoloulos saying he was ready to back a High Court ruling from 2000 allowing Athens to seize German-owned property to compensate the victims of a Nazi massacre of 218 Greek civilians in the village of Distomo.

The ruling about German assets can only be backed by a justice minister and his predecessors have always baulked at doing so. It relates to a specific atrocity in the village in which Nazi forces went on a two-hour rampage butchering men, women and children in what they said was retaliation for an attack on them by resistance forces.

Meanwhile in Germany there were claims of a wider ranging plan to take German assets.

Spiegel magazine yesterday reported that it had learned of a plan to seize German property and assets if the reparations demand was dismissed.

It claimed this would involve the seizure of the Goethe Institute, Germanys flagship cultural organisation abroad, as well as businesses and assets of German firms. Resentment about the four-year Nazi occupation of Greece in which some 250,000 people were killed, is long-standing.

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