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To: Don Green who wrote (20318)	10/1/1998 7:01:00 PM
From: goldsnow	Respond to of 116856

And same goes for Dollar, right? Belgian PM joins call for global monetary reform 05:13 a.m. Oct 01, 1998 Eastern BRUSSELS, Oct 1 (Reuters) - Belgian Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene added his voice on Thursday to calls for reform of the international monetary system. He said the arrival of economic and monetary union would only allow Europe to take part fully in this debate if it first organised itself to speak with one voice. ''The euro offers Europe the opportunity to play a lead role in the international monetary system,'' Dehaene told a conference on the euro in Brussels. ''The current crisis, or rather crises, shows the need to have a more organised monetary system, I hesitate to use the words, but a new a new Bretton Woods,'' he added. Dehaene said there could be a new monetary order in the 21st century ''of more important regional monetary zones,'' and praised China for not devaluing the yuan. ''In international monetary forums Europe has to be organised to speak with one voice,'' he said. At a political level the European Commisison and whichever country held the EU's rotating presidency already took part in G7/G8 meetings, he said. It was essential that the euro zone be represented in G7 finance meetings, he said. ''We cannot accept as certain countries have proposed that the presence of four European countries (in the G7) is sufficient and that euroland is represented by them. ''We need a solution similar that of the political G7 where the Commission, the EU presidency and (the European Central) bank are represented, and the position they represent is that of euroland and not one country,'' he said. On the International Monetary Fund, Dehaene said the EMU area and the ECB needed a seat on the IMF executive board and that the euro-11 group and the European Commisison should be represented on the policy-making Interim Committee. ''I think the Vienna council is the latest date by when we must solve these problems,'' he said. However, speaking on the same platform, former Belgian finance minister Phillippe Maystadt, who was also chairman of the IMF Interim Committee until June, said it was unrealistic to push for a renegotiation in the IMF statutes at this stage. ''We have to find a pragmatic solution,'' Maystadt said. ''To open up a discussion today on revision of the IMF statutes could mean us having to accept the demands of the United States congress, which would not be desirable,'' he said. Maystadt proposed instead that one European country's alternate member on the IMF executive board be replaced by a representative of the ECB, thus allowing the bank to take part in IMF discussions and getting round the statutes of the fund, which say only governments can be members. ((Brussels Newsroom +32 2 287 6830, fax +32 2 230 5573, brussels.newsroom+reuters.com)) Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited.