During the two-day visit the special envoy will meet with representatives of the Latvian government, parliament and the Jewish community of Latvia. This is Dean's third visit to Latvia.
After lengthy debating, members of the parliament foreign affairs committee on Wednesday approved a bill on the restitution of five Jewish properties for its second reading in parliament.
Under the draft legislation the properties will be turned over to the Jewish community to correct the historical injustice Latvia's Jewish congregations and organizations suffered during the Holocaust and following Soviet occupation, authors of the bill explained.
In January this year the Latvian parliament decided to start reviewing the proposal for return of five properties that used to belong to Latvia's Jewish community before World War II to the Riga Jewish Community.
Three of these properties are situated in Rīga, one in Latvia's seaside town of Jūrmala, and one in Kandava, a town in western Latvia. They are to be returned to the Latvian Council of Jewish Communities.
The ruling coalition parties had been postponing decisions on this matter for many years until Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkēvičs’ visit to the US early this year.
Since then, while Unity and the Greens and Farmers Union back the restitution proposal for the five properties, the National Alliance has maintained a more reserved position, having sacrificed a Justice Minister in a previous Cabinet (Gaidis Bērziņš) ostensibly over the issue.
The Jewish diaspora has claims against a total of 270 properties.
