By Ayhan Simsek

BERLIN

Germany has rejected on Wednesday a Greek claim for about €280 billion ($323 billion) in WWII reparations.

“The reparations issue was legally and politically settled,” government spokesman Steffen Seibert told a news conference in Berlin.

He made the remarks ahead of German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier’s official talks in Athens.

Earlier, German weekly Der Spiegel reported that the Greek president, Prokopis Pavlopoulos, was planning to raise the issue of WWII reparations during Steinmeier’s visit.

Since 2015, various Greek politicians claimed that Germany owed Greece about €280 billion in WWII reparations, 10.3 billion of which forced loans taken by the Nazis.

The German government has repeatedly argued that the WWII reparation issue was resolved under previous international agreements.