Finance officials comments at IMF meetings

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Financial officials from around the world are in Washington this weekend for the International Monetary Fund and World Bank fall meetings.

On Friday, top officials from the Group of Seven rich nations promised exceptional and urgent steps to deal with the global financial crisis.

Below are key quotes from officials on Saturday:

CHRISTINE LAGARDE, French economy minister, speaking to reporters about interbank lending guarantees:

"Guarantees, whether they relate to certain loans, certain debt issues, certain interbank loans or deposits, have multiple dimensions and we have to examine them on a case-by-case basis to see whether they have a distortionary character."

"We committed ourselves, in both the G7 statement and the conclusion of the Ecofin, to ensuring that any measure taken by a member state should take care to avoid distortionary effects in other member states."

DOMINIQUE STRAUSS-KAHN, IMF managing director, at a news conference :

"In the coming days ... what I expect is that the reaction by the different institutions will be positive enough to unfreeze the different markets and to restore the necessary funding."

"The crisis is not only a crisis limited to advanced countries, but it also hit a lot of emerging countries, low income. And so we (the IMF) need to be ready to answer and we are already answering to many countries asking for support. To do that we have a lot of resources that are available...we're ready to help the country that needs some support."