The German Nobel literature laureate Günter Grass has compared the Israeli interior minister to the Stasi, the latest move in an escalating dispute following Grass's publication of a poem criticising Israel.

Eli Yishai on Sunday banned Grass from entering Israel, to which Grass replied in a commentary in Süddeutsche Zeitung by comparing the travel ban to one imposed on him by Erich Mielke, head of East Germany's dreaded secret police.

He wrote that only the communist DDR and Burma had ever banned him from entry before.

"Now the interior minister of a democracy, the state of Israel, has punished me with a travel ban and the tone of his justification reminds me of the verdict of minister Mielke," Grass wrote in the piece which appeared on the Süddeutsche Zeitung's website on Wednesday evening. Grass said he still saw himself as "irrevocably connected to the country of Israel", but while Burma seemed to offer a glimmer of hope for change, Israel was an "unchecked nuclear power" that regarded itself as immune to criticism.

Grass, 84, caused a storm with his poem What Must Be Said in which he accused Israel of being a threat to world peace. The poem led to accusations of antisemitism and prompted Yishai to declare him persona non grata.

Grass said in an interview following the poem's publication that he was "primarily talking about the [Netanyahu] government" and had often supported Israel.

In a statement released on Wednesday evening, Yishai rejected the Stasi comparison. "There is no doubt that Günter, as one who came out of a tyrannical regime, usually knows how to identify one. However, this time he's wrong," the statement said, making reference Grass's youth in Nazi Germany.

Grass had been for many the voice of Germany's postwar conscience, appealing to his countrymen and women to face up to their Nazi past. His moral authority was severely dented when he revealed only in 2006 that in his teens he had been a member of the Nazi Waffen SS.

Yishai said he would be happy to meet Grass in a neutral nation to explain why someone who had served under the Nazis would not be able to enter a state whose people they had advocated exterminating.

The minister added that his only mistake was not imposing a ban on Grass earlier, when he took up his position as interior minister.