Japan's efforts to hold the yen down were aimed at fighting deflation and would be understood by Group of Seven officials, a newspaper on Saturday quoted Finance Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki as saying.
The comments came ahead of a meeting of G7 finance ministers and central bank governors in Washington at the end of next week.
Foreign exchange policy has been a key issue at recent G7 meetings as the dollar tumbled against the euro and the yen and Japan sought to protect an export-led economic recovery.
"It has meaning as a way to prevent excessive moves in the market and to get rid of deflation," Tanigaki told business daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun in an interview, referring to Japan's foreign exchange interventions.
Tanigaki said Japan's foreign exchange interventions, "would be able to gain international understanding" at the forthcoming meeting of leading economic powers, Nihon Keizai reported.
The US Treasury Department, in a report released on Thursday, called Japanese interventions in currency markets in the second half of 2003, estimated at $230 billion daily, "extremely large".
But the US report also said no major trading partner had manipulated its currency to gain a trade advantage in that period.

Copyright Reuters, 2004

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