Mainz (Germany), Jan 12 -Herta Mueller, winner of the latest Nobel Prize for Literature, called on Germany Monday to find and prosecute former agents of Romania's Securitate communist secret police.

In remarks to ARD public television to be aired Monday evening, the Romanian-born, German-language novelist said large numbers of ex-agents had resettled in Germany after communism ended in Romania 20 years ago.

"Germany is a comfortable nature reserve for Securitate informers," she charged, saying Germany had not merely been lax in uncovering them: it had done nothing about them at all.

Mueller's books describe being persecuted by the sinister Securitate while she was a young woman.

She said Germany should itself try to expose former informers, just as it had uncovered informers from the East German Stasi secret police, saying, "Both offenders and the victims live here now and have German citizenship."

The ARD programme, Report Mainz, quoted German scholars as estimating 500 to 2,000 Romanians now living in Germany used to brief the Securitate on the doings of their friends and colleagues. (IANS)