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English/Nat The U-S dollar soared against the Japanese yen on Monday. The rise came amid disappointment that Japan offered no concrete plans to save its economy and permanently strengthen the yen at a meeting of world finance officials. The dollar bought 137.33 yen by midmorning, up 2.36 yen from late on Friday in Tokyo and also above its late New York rate of 136.10 yen on Friday. The dollar had risen as high as 138.45 yen in morning trading. But the Ministry of Finance stopped the yen from falling further by hinting it would intervene again in currency markets. Joint intervention by the United States and Japan last week brought the yen up from an eight-year low against the dollar. Senior finance officials from 17 nations had gathered in Tokyo on Saturday for a hastily arranged crisis meeting. They urged the government to stabilise exchange rates and do more to put its economy on a recovery course. However, no concrete steps to lift the yen or specific pledges by Japan to clean up its ailing financial system came out of the meeting. Analysts fear that the market will react badly to Japan's indecision. SOUNDBITE: (English) "I think the market is quite surprised that there were no more specifics in the communication on Saturday. It talked about Japan taking some urgent measures to change the tax system and also talked about solving the financial instability in the financial system, but no specifics there at all, purely things that the Japanese government have already been saying for the last two or the months. So I think the market is going to be very disappointed about that." SUPER CAPTION: Garry Evans, Strategist, HSBC Securities Japan The recent slide of the yen roiled Asian financial markets by stirring concerns about a possible new wave of currency devaluations. At Saturday's meeting, China once again confirmed its role in containing the region's financial turmoil by refusing to devaluate its currency. With President Clinton travelling to China this week, the U-S may be obliged to defend the yen following Chinese hints to devalue the yuan if Japan's currency continued to weaken. SOUNDBITE: (English) "And if Japan doesn't start to take these concrete measures fairly quickly again China and America together are going to start to putting pressure on Japan one more time - it's a little bit of egg on the face for the Japanese government too, You know you've got China which is still only a developing country basically telling the Japanese you've got sort your economy out, frankly that's rather embarrassing for the Japanese." SUPER CAPTION: Garry Evans, Strategist, HSBC Securities Japan In a separate development, the Daiwa Bank Ltd. has denied a published report that it was negotiating to merge with the ailing Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan Ltd. and another major Japanese lender. In March, L-T-C-B announced problem loans amounting to one point four (tr) trillion yen (10 billion U-S dollars). Most of those were made to property buyers during the land price bubble of the late 1980s. Last week, shares in L-T-C-B lost about 40 percent of their value on rumours that the bank was struggling to stay afloat. SOUNDBITE: (English) "If it has a merger for example, there is talk today that L-T-C-B might merge with D-K-B Daiwa. Now that would be very significant because you've got three banks in different sectors, one a trust bank, one a long term credit bank, one a city bank merging, if the government does that throws open everything, every sort of merger becomes possible." SUPER CAPTION: Garry Evans, Strategist, HSBC Securities Japan You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/5c9a332a3dbd949fa858aea186d62bb3 Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork