A World War II bunker discovered in December by construction workers near the planned Berlin site of Germany's Holocaust memorial was built for Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, city authorities said on Monday.

Lutz Leupolt, a project coordinator for the DSK city development agency, said the three-room bunker found two meters (six feet) underground near the Potsdamer Platz square in central Berlin was at one time connected to Goebbels' city-center home.

"The house was destroyed during the war," Leupolt said. "No plans for the bunker were ever found. We came across the structure during geophysic scannings in November. We were able to determine it was a bunker in December and now are fairly certain it belonged to Goebbels."

The DSK agency is clearing the ground of munitions and other underground obstructions for the Holocaust memorial, which Germany is planning to build on the site near the government quarter in the heart of Berlin in 1999.

It was not immediately clear what would happen to the Goebbels bunker, which is about 300 square meters (yards) in size.

It could be removed, filled in, or restored and turned into an exhibit linked to the Holocaust memorial, Leupolt said.

He said the bunker was not connected to Hitler's bunker, which was several hundred meters (yards) away. Goebbels and his family committed suicide in the closing days of the war.b

Several World War Two-era bunkers have been found in the area, which lies just east of where the Berlin Wall divided the city during the Cold War.

Some of the bunkers have been filled in and demolition experts blew up one believed to have been used by Albert Speer, Hitler's armaments minister and architect.