NEW YORK, Feb 9: The dollar eased slightly against other major currencies on Friday as markets braced for a weekend meeting of top finance officials from major industrialized nations.

The euro edged up to $1.4505 from $1.4479 in New York late Thursday.

Against the Japanese currency, the dollar fetched 107.32 yen from 107.48 late Thursday.

With scant economic news in the United States, attention was focused on the weekend meeting of finance ministers in Tokyo, Japan, of the Group of Seven industrialized nations.

Specific discussions on currencies are likely to be fairly low down the agenda due to the more pressing issues of financial market turmoil and economic uncertainty.

Publicly, China will continue to bear the brunt of pressure for exchange rate adjustments but behind the curtains, the US will be called to halt the dollar’s slide, said Kathy Lien at Forex Capital Markets.

The communique from G7 is expected to be released on Saturday and is rumoured to be relatively inline with previous releases on the currency front, said Camilla Sutton at Scotia Capital.We would not be surprised by this since we have obviously seen some currency adjustment from Japan and other Asian currencies recently. European officials have commented that they will bring up exchange rates, but at this point we think other concerns will take center stage.Patrick Fearon at AG Edwards said the dollar was giving back a portion of its out-sized gains yesterday on profit taking.

The currency’s modest retreat today does nothing to detract from the fact that it has done exceptionally well even without any particular news items to give it a lift, Fearon said.

We think the dollar is benefiting from a more generalized shift in sentiment. For one thing, the massive monetary and fiscal stimulus that is being injected into the US economy is likely to boost dollar returns by late in the year.

At the same time, the major foreign central banks are either continuing or preparing to cut their interest rates. As we have long argued, this environment should be positive for the dollar in 2008.In late New York trade, the dollar stood at 1.1030 Swiss francs after 1.1038 Thursday.

—AFP