No change on fx dents G7 credibility - Europe firms

BRUSSELS, Feb 11 (Reuters) - The inability of the Group of Seven financial leaders to change their message on currencies undermines the credibility of that forum, Europe's biggest business organisation said on Monday.

Finance ministers from the United States, Canada, Japan, Britain, Germany, France and Italy on Saturday stuck to their October 2007 message on foreign exchange, which stresses only the need for a faster rise by the Chinese currency.

G7 statements are closely watched by financial markets for guidance.

"We are disappointed to see that the G7 has again produced this weekend a relatively weak statement, without addressing the responsibility of its members in solving global imbalances," BusinessEurope President Ernest-Antoine Seilliere said.

"The credibility of this forum will decline rapidly if it is not able to steer meaningful actions," he said in speaking points for a meeting with European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet and Eurogroup Chairman Jean-Claude Juncker.

BusinessEurope, which represents 20 million European firms, had wanted the G7 to address the weakness of the dollar and the Japanese yen as well as the strength of the euro, which is well above the pain threshold for many euro zone exporters.

"The G7 should have said more. Just recommending transparency is not enough. We are worried to see that at the international level they are still not considering the currency problem as one that should be considered as such," Seilliere told reporters before the meeting.

But Juncker, who attended the G7 meeting in Tokyo, said the United States had made changing the statement impossible.

"I think that the conditions which would have allowed us to give a major change to the wording ... were not given. The conditions would have been the U.S. would have agreed to accept any change to the wording. They did not agree," he said. (Reporting by Ingrid Melander and Huw Jones; Writing by Jan Strupczewski; Editing by Dale Hudson)