BERLIN - German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Thursday she could not rule out nationalising any of the country's banks, following similar moves in other European countries such as Britain.

"No possibility can be fully ruled out," Merkel said in Berlin after talks with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

But she added that the effects of Wednesday's coordinated interest rate cuts by central banks had first to be assessed.

"The basic principle remains, though, that a company has to get itself out of its own problems," Merkel said, but "at the same time the state cannot extract itself completely."

Berlin announced at the weekend a 50-billion-euro (68-billion-dollar) rescue package for Germany's fourth biggest bank Hypo Real Estate (HRE), one of three of the country's banks that have needed help over the past year.

But Merkel's government has so far not followed other European countries in partly or fully nationalising any of its lenders, such as Britain, which on Wednesday pledged 50 billion pounds (64 billion euros, 87 billion dollars) to buy stakes in the country's beleaguered banks.

Merkel echoed comments made earlier by Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck, who said Europe's biggest economy did not need to nationalise any of its banks but that this could change if the global financial crisis got any worse.

"So far I don't see the need for state takeovers in Germany because the German banking sector has been hit badly by the financial crisis but less hard" than in other countries, Steinbrueck told the Handelsblatt daily in comments published Thursday.

"But this might change as uncertainties about future developments are currently much too high," he told the paper in an interview.

- AFP /ls