Berlin - Germany is to help pay for the restoration of a church badly damaged in this week's earthquake in central Italy, the foreign ministry said on Friday. The building involved is the 18th century church in the village of Onna. The village was almost completely flattened in the quake, which claimed more than 200 lives.

Germany's contribution to the relief effort was discussed earlier Friday in a telephone conversation between Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his Italian counterpartFranco Frattini.

Steinmeier repeated Berlin's offer of emergency assistance for all of the affected region as well as help in the reconstruction effort.

The Italian government has put the cost of reconstruction at 1.2 billion euros (1.6 billion dollars). Tens of thousands of homes were damaged in the quake and whole villages need to be rebuilt.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government on Thursday approved financial relief for the victims and earmarked an extra 100 million euros for civil defence measures.(dpa)