"We have on the one side Ukraine, whose situation is not improving; in Israel and Palestine things are getting worse; the disaster the Americans left in Iraq, the atrocities of Islamic state and the problem of Syria," he told the Spanish newspaper El Pais in the interview published Tuesday.

"There is war everywhere; we run the risk of committing the same mistakes as before; so without realising it we can get into a world war as if we were sleepwalking," he added.

Spain's top-selling newspaper said the interview, carried out at the author's home in Luebeck in northern Germany on March 21, was his last before his death aged 87.