Trieste, Italy - Germany's Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Tuesday joined his Italian counterpart Franco Frattini in laying a commemorative wreath for the victims of a former World War II Nazi death camp near the north-eastern Italian port of Trieste.

Steinmeier was in Trieste Tuesday as part of a summit including talks between Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The German foreign minister's morning visit to the Risiera di San Sabba is seen as an attempt to mend fences with Italy. Acrimony exists between the two countries 60 years after the end of the war over demands for retribution for Nazi-era atrocities.

According to estimates, between 3,000 and 5,000 people - mostly political prisoners - were murdered at the camp.

"The atrocities perpetrated at Risiera di San Sabba in the name of Germany are part of our common history," Steinmeier said during the memorial ceremony.

"Many are the events and the places of memory which represent the betrayal of civilisation by Germany," he added.

Steinmeier also recalled the "suffering of around 600,000 Italian soldiers" interned in German prison camps. He was referring to those imprisoned following Italy's decision in September 1943, in the wake of Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini's toppling, to abandon its Axis alliance with Germany.

Frattini and Steinmeier also announced the creation of a joint Italian-German commission of historians which would research the treatment of Italian World War II prisoners in German hands.

Last month the German government rejected a verdict from a Rome court ordering Germany to pay personal damages for Nazi atrocities to match reparations already paid to Italy as a nation.

The case was filed by nine families on behalf of relatives killed when Nazi soldiers massacred 203 people at Civitella in northern Italy in June 1944. The Italian court awarded them 1 million euros (1.3 million dollars).

Germany is currently preparing a complaint to the International Court of Justice in the Hague to fend off further reparation claims. (dpa)