BERLIN, September 12, 2008 (AFP) - Berlin brushed off Friday comments attributed to Liechtenstein's Prince Hans-Adam II suggesting that Germany today was a 'Fourth Reich.'

'The German government adheres to international law,' government spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm told a regular news conference, saying the prince's remarks quoted by a Swiss paper on Thursday were 'of a private nature.'

Wilhelm added that Berlin was interested in 'good, close and friendly relations' with the tiny principality -- even though a huge tax evasion scandal has led to frosty ties between the two.

Prince Hans-Adam, 63, made his provocative remarks in a letter to the director of the Jewish Museum in Berlin in which he refused to allow one of his paintings to be loaned to the museum.

'We are waiting for better times in German-Liechtenstein relations,' the prince wrote in his letter, dated June 24 and reproduced in the Tages-Anzeiger on Thursday.

'In the past 200 years, we have already outlived three German Reichs, and I hope we will also outlive a fourth one,' he said. The Third Reich was the name given to Hitler's Germany.

The discovery in February of a large number of secret trust funds in Liechtenstein led German Chancellor Angela Merkel to threaten to isolate it from the rest of Europe if it did not do more to help international efforts to tackle tax evasion.