The German Foreign Ministry has been in talks with Kiev in a bid to allow jailed former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko to receive treatment in Berlin’s Charite clinic, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Saturday.

“We have already sent doctors to examine her health," Merkel said in an interview with radio station NDR Info. "Doctors believe that the treatment can be carried out in a German clinic. That is why German Foreign Ministry is trying to agree over it,” she added.

Tymoshenko, who is serving seven years in jail for abuse of office, has severe back pain and cannot walk. Doctors from German clinic Charite who examined Tymoshenko on Friday diagnosed her with “an acute form of herniation of intervertebral disks.”

The Ukrainian authorities have authorized Tymoshenko to receive treatment at a hospital outside the prison, but she refuses to go there.

On Tuesday Tymoshenko said she was beaten while being moved to the hospital for an examination last Friday.

She is currently in her ninth day of a hunger strike and is extremely weak, her daughter Yevgenia said on Saturday after visiting her in prison.

"Mum is starving and is in an extremely weak condition," she said.

Tymoshenko also has been charged with attempting to embezzle $405 million of government funds during the 1990s, when she headed Ukraine’s state corporation United Energy Systems. Her trial was suspended on Saturday to May 21 due to her absence from court.