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Laying out his agenda for this weekend's G20 meetings in South Korea , Geithner said in a Wall Street Journal interview he would seek numerical targets for "sustainable" trade surpluses and deficits as a way to help rebalance the global economy.

He is hoping that by persuading major emerging and advanced economies to cooperate on foreign exchange policies, he can coax China into allowing the value of its yuan to rise further.

"Right now, there is no established sense of what's fair," Geithner told the Journal.

"We would like countries to move toward a set of norms on exchange rate policy," he added.

Geithner also sought to provide some reassurances that the United States is not deliberately trying to devalue its dollar.

The Journal said that in the interview he suggested that he saw little reason for the dollar to sink further against the euro and the yen, saying that these "major currencies" were "roughly in alignment now."

The comments briefly lifted the dollar in Asian trade, pushing it up to 81.84 yen from about 81 yen. It settled back down to 81.15, near a 15-year low.

Geithner on Monday in California vowed that the United States would not engage in dollar devaluation, saying "No country around the world can devalue its way to prosperity."

CURRENCY TAKES CENTER STAGE

While past G20 meetings avoided direct confrontation on thorny exchange rate issues, the meetings starting on Friday in Gyeongju are expected to address the problem head-on. The dollar's protracted slide and China's tightly controlled trading band for the yuan have put upward pressure on other emerging market currencies that are allowed to move more freely.

Actions by several countries, including Brazil this week, to stem the rise of their currencies and protect their exporters, has fueled talk of a "currency war."

While some criticism has been leveled at U.S. Federal Reserve monetary easing for weakening the dollar, U.S. officials point to China's determination to prevent its yuan from rising as the main source of tensions.

"When large economies with undervalued exchange rates act to keep their currencies from appreciating, that compels other countries to do the same, setting off a dynamic of competitive nonappreciation," a senior Treasury official told a news briefing on Wednesday, referring to China.

Geithner repeated his view that China's yuan is significantly undervalued, but if the pace of appreciation since September were sustained, it would correct the undervaluation over time.