Euro zone not counting on quick response to yuan call

By Simon Rabinovitch and Chris Buckley

NANJING, China (Reuters) - The euro zone's top economic officials pressed China on Sunday to let the yuan resume its gradual rise but said they were not counting on immediate results.

"I can't say that I'm more optimistic than I was before I came here," Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, who chairs the 16-nation Eurogroup of euro zone finance ministers, told a news conference in the eastern Chinese city of Nanjing.

Speaking after a day of talks with senior officials including Premier Wen Jiabao, he said it was tough to justify the yuan's recent depreciation against a basket of currencies in light of China's fast economic growth and bulging external surpluses.

"People think an orderly and gradual appreciation of the renminbi would in the best interest of China and in the best interest of the global economy," Juncker said.

Striking a conciliatory tone, he said he understood why China had halted the appreciation of its currency, also known as the renminbi, during the global credit crunch.

The yuan rose 21 percent in all against the dollar in the three years after Beijing ended a peg to the U.S. currency in July 2005 and said it would let the yuan float in a managed band with reference to a basket of currencies.

Last July, however, China effectively repegged the exchange rate around 6.83 per dollar to help its beleaguered exporters.

"We are not advocating an immediate, short-term-oriented, dramatic change in Chinese monetary policy, but, as I said, an orderly and gradual appreciation of the renminbi," Juncker said.