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"Everyone needs a strong dollar," French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde said on Friday ahead of the G7 talks in the run-up to annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Turkey's biggest city.
The IMF has said that a tentative global economic recovery has begun but has also warned that the economic crisis is not yet over as the financial sector remains badly battered and unemployment in many countries continues to rise.
The G7 finance chiefs were to discuss "the next steps and implementation" of a roadmap agreed at the G20 summit last week for recovery from the worst recession since World War II, a US Treasury official said earlier.
Signs of recovery have pushed down the value of the dollar, which is traditionally seen on currency markets as a safe haven in tough economic times and whose status as the world's main reserve currency has been questioned.
The current state of the dollar has also led some experts to conclude that Washington is now allowing the currency to lose value as a way of boosting US exports by making them cheaper -- a tactic that would weaken European exports.
US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has sought to dampen these fears, saying recently that "a strong dollar is very important" to the US economy.
The dollar meanwhile fell against both the yen and the euro on Friday, going down to 1.4590 dollars to the euro in late trading in London.
