German Chancellor Angela Merkel asked for "forgiveness" on Thursday from the families of 10 people, mostly foreigners, believed killed in a seven-year murder spree by a neo-Nazi gang.

Merkel, who led a memorial ceremony at Berlin's concert hall attended by about 1,200 people including some of the victims' relatives, described the killings as both a "disgrace" and an "attack" on Germany.

The parties in Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition government met Saturday to find a candidate to replace German president Christian Wulff, the day after he resigned over a corruption probe.

Merkel had talks with Horst Seehofer, head of the Bavarian sister party of her Christian Democratic Union, and Philipp Roesler of junior coalition partner the Free Democrats, as well as leaders of the parliamentary groups of all three parties.

Scandal-hit German President Christian Wulff announced Friday he was stepping down as head of state, a day after prosecutors asked parliament to lift his immunity from prosecution.

"I am... today stepping down from the office of federal president to free up the way quickly for a successor," he said in a televised statement from his Bellevue palace.

The United States vowed Thursday to retain close military ties to its European allies after unveiling plans to withdraw more than 11,000 troops from Germany and Italy as part of a strategic shift to Asia.

"No one should equate lower numbers of U.S. troops permanently stationed in Europe with declining engagement with our European partners," Pentagon press secretary George Little told reporters.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Tuesday the EU backs the Arab League's "firm stance" on Syria and will support it through further sanctions, ahead of talks with the head of the pan-Arab body.

The EU supports the Arab League's action to try to end the bloodshed in Syria and will "also support (it) through further sanctions", Merkel told reporters, speaking alongside Arab League Secretary General Nabil al-Arabi.

Tunisian Industry Minister Mohamed Lamine Chakhari is in talks with German company Leoni to ward off the closure of a plant in Tunisia that employs some 2,700 people, the ministry said Saturday.

Chakhari went late Friday to Mateur, some 60 kilometers northwest of Tunis, to call for "dialogue ... leading to solutions that take into consideration the future of the business," the ministry said in a communique.

A German court sentenced a Kosovo man to life on Friday for killing two U.S. soldiers and attempting to kill three more at Frankfurt airport last March in Germany's first deadly jihadist attack.

Presiding judge Thomas Sagebiel said 22-year-old Arid Uka -- who was born in Kosovo but brought up in Germany -- was found guilty on two counts of murder and three counts of attempted murder when he opened fire on March 2 last year on a group of U.S. soldiers on their way to serve in Afghanistan.

A German couple and their child drowned in a tourist submarine accident on Thursday off Egypt's Red Sea resort town of Hurghada, security officials told AFP.

The victims were a German man, his wife and child, they said.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said on Thursday Germany was expelling four diplomats from the Syrian embassy in Berlin after the arrest of two men suspected of spying on regime opponents.

"After the arrest of two people suspected of spying for Syria, I have decided to expel four members of the Syrian embassy in Berlin," Westerwelle said in a statement.

The European Union is making contingency plans in case it needs to evacuate EU citizens from Syria and is mulling a ban on flights into and out of the country, senior officials said Wednesday.

The suspension of commercial flights is among a raft of new sanctions being debated by the EU in the face of an unrelenting crackdown on opponents in Syria after Russia and China vetoed a U.N. resolution to end the violence.