NEW YORK (EJP)---The World Jewish Congress called on the Lithuanian government to urgently address the anti-Jewish climate in the country and to speedily enact legislation allowing for the restitution of properties seized under the Nazi occupation.

At a meeting in New York attended by several leaders of Jewish organizations, Lithuanian Prime Minister Gediminas Kirkilas was urged to improve Lithuania’s poor record regarding its Jewish heritage, the preservation of Jewish cemeteries and the fight against anti-Semitism, "especially at a time when Vilnius is being honored by the European Union to serve as the European cultural capital in 2009."

Lithuania is a member state of the European Union.

WJC secretary general Michael Schneider also told Kirkilas:"The World Jewish Restitution Organization began its negotiations with your government six years ago. Until today, no piece of legislation has even been sent to the Lithuanian parliament for deliberation."

Schneider stressed that other central and eastern European countries had successfully enacted laws allowing for the restitution of seized properties, or compensation.

He said that "encouraging progress" have been made in local negotiations with Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Romania, Macedonia and Bulgaria.

"Lithuania stands alone among these European countries," he added.

The meeting, hosted by the American Jewish Committee (AJC), also focused on Yitzhak Arad, who during World War II fought as a Lithuanian Jewish partisan against the Nazis and is now being investigated by the Lithuanian prosecutor-general for alleged war crimes.

The Jewish leaders told the Prime Minister’s delegation that the charges against Arad were “baseless”, and they urged the Lithuanian government to desist from such harassment of Holocaust-era heroes such as Arad and others.

The World Jewish Congress is an international organization representing Jewish communities in over 80 countries around the world.