BERLIN Germany reacted with both optimism and skepticism Friday after a United States court dismissed a class action lawsuit blocking long-promised compensation to former Nazi slave laborers.

A senior German government official and business leader indicated the move made it likely that payments to victims could begin this summer.

As it looks now we can get a decision in Parliament before the summer recess," said chief German government negotiator, Otto Graf Lambsdorff, in a *** Rheinische Post *** newspaper interview.

The Bundestag, Parliament's Lower Chamber, must give final approval for payout of the 10 billion mark (4.5 billion dollar) compensation fund which is being half paid by the German government and half by industry.

Graf Lambsdorff said, however, that he was still waiting for details of the U.S. Federal Court's ruling.

The head of Germany's influential Chamber of Industry and Commerce (DIHT), Ludwig Georg Braun, said he believed payments to victims could soon begin.

"There are just a few small questions to clear up -- this can be done in weeks," said Braun in a Deutschland Radio interview.

But the spokesman for German businesses which have contributed to the fund, Wolfgang Gibowski, said he was skeptical given that there were still further class action lawsuits pending in the U.S.

"We are dependent on the American courts and have experienced several unpleasant surprises from their rulings," Gibowski told Info Radio Berlin.

Braun criticized the slow U.S. process of dealing with class action lawsuits and said he fully supports German business which is demanding legal security against any further Nazi era compensation claims.

U.S. Judge Shirly Wohl Kram on Thursday dismissed a class-action lawsuit by now elderly former Nazi slaves against German banks, removing one of the last major legal hurdles to paying compensation to the estimated 1.5 million surviving victims.

Gibowski rejected allegations that German business was guilty blocking payments to the victims.

"The delay is due to Judge Kram," he said.

Compensation will be paid to victims all over the world. Many of the expected recipients are non-Jewish slaves imported from Eastern European countries of Czech Republic, Poland, Russia, Belarus and Ukraine to work in industrial firms like Krupps, German banks and the German government during Adolf Hitler's Third Reich, according to DPA.