GENEVA, May 13: The Swiss are in a dilemma over the damaging 200-page report released this week by the US government which documents the fate of Nazi German gold stolen from occupied countries. While the Swiss government is bracing itself for demands from world Jewish groups for more compensation, officials are at pains to remind the world that Switzerland had paid $60 million to the Allies as compensation for having traded with Nazi Germany and say there is no question of renegotiating that agreement.

Gilles Pettitpierre, a high-profile member of Geneva's Parliament and son of Max Pettitpierre, former federal minister who was part of the Swiss team that negotiated the Washington accords, says, ``My answer is no to renegotiations,'' he said. Pettitpierre says the 1946 discussions were free and fair and the Allies had all the necessary information to settle on a compensation figure agreeable to all sides. ``The talks were difficult but never was there any intention to cheat anybody my father did not betray the victims of the war,'' Pettitpierre told this newspaper. ``We have to examine our history and assume our past,'' he added, but cautioned against what is turning into a breathless interpretation of historical data with loaded words like ``morality'' and ``neutrality'' thrown around irresponsibly. Both Pettitpierre and Jolles say they are perplexed at the virulence with which Switzerland's wartime history is now being examined by the US, the UK and France -- the Allies -- leading to headlines that call the Swiss ``Nazi's Bankers'', ``Financers of terror machines'' and ``History's worst plunderers''.

A new report from Washington bears the two men out, at least partly by acknowledging that there were no angels in the War and everybody including the US took advantage of the situation. Yet, the pendulum of guilt swings heavily against the Swiss, pushed by Washington, London, and to a lesser extent Paris. Both men offer no explanations about why this is so. Part of it has to do with archives that were declassified 50 years after the War.

But few in this country think that explains all. ``The situation is too serious for me to comment on it now,'' Pettitpierre said.

Swiss banks have a reputation for protecting war chests of dictators and greedy politicians beyond the reach of justice. Marcos, Bofors, Irangate, Babydoc are only a few examples that remind the world about the need for Swiss banks to be made more accountable to the world than they currently are. And many people, especially among the young Swiss, now know as their parents probably didn't that if Switzerland remained neutral during Europe's worst wars, it was partly due to its own efforts but also because it was ready to make deals with everyone around it. It is no secret any more that Switzerland turned fleeing Jews away from its borders and stamped passports of Jews with the dreaded letter ``J'' for quick identification -- dastardly acts for which the government recently apologised. And while many say a thorough internal debate is necessary, they question the external pressures under which this is being sought. ``Switzerland was encircled during the war and to stay alive it had to trade on the one hand with the Allies and on the other with Germany and all sides knew thisto turn around now and say Switzerland lied and hid information is unfair,'' Jolles said.

Meanwhile, the US government describes the subject of the report as ``one of the greatest thefts by a government in history'' the confiscation by Nazi Germany of $580 million worth of gold from central banks in countries under German occupation in addition to the undermined amounts stolen from individuals. Switzerland's central bank has acknowledged buying 1.2 billion Swiss francs of Nazi gold at 1940s prices much of which, it now concedes, must have been stolen from occupied territories. But the bank says it never had any evidence that gold from Hitler's Reichsbank was smelted from the stolen possessions such as jewellery and gold teeth of concentration camp victims. The US government, it emerges from the report, was well aware of the grisly practice of adding ``victim gold'' to the assets of the Nazi state as its troops discovered a huge cache of bullion in a mine in 1945.

How Nazi Germany used ``non-monetary gold'' seized from its victims is by far the most sensitive issue addressed by the report which was ordered by President Bill Clinton under pressure from Jewish groups who threatened to boycott Swiss banks unless they acknowledged their wartime role. The conclusions though embarrassing for the Swiss also cast the US in poor light. Eizenstat, the author of the report, finds, for example, that the US government consciously ``misdirected'' gold from Nazi victims into the pool established by the Tripartite Gold Commission whose aim was to compensate individuals and governments. The TGC comprising Britain, France and the US has paid out a total of 326 tonnes to 10 European countries who had been occupied by the Nazis. The US is now proposing that the six tonnes of gold that remain in the pool – valued at some $70 million – should form the basis of a fund for victims. Facts, fiction, history and geography have pushed Switzerland to take stock of its past. It would be a shame if this mea culpa stops at Swiss borders.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.