WASHINGTON. Oct 9: In a victory for the Clinton administration. the International Monetary Fund says it soon will announce agreement on an estimated 30 billion dollars loan package for Brazil, reports AP.

Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin had worked behind the scenes during the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to line up support for Brazil, the latest country roiled by investor flight.

While not mentioning a figure, IMF Managing Director Michel Camdessus said at a news conference Thursday closing the meetings that part of the Brazilian loan support could be extended on a "precautionary

basis."

Last week, president Bill Clinton first raised the idea of broadening the IMF approach to combating financial contagion by speeding money to countries threatened with investor flight before they have exhausted their foreign currency reserves.

The IMF has put together bailout packages totaling 137 billion dollar since the financial crisis struck Thailand 15 months ago and then spread from Asia to Russia.

The situation worsened dramatically in August when the Russian rouble collapsed and*the government defaulted on billions of dollars in foreign debt, weeks after the IMF provided a 22.6 billion dollar res-

cue package.

Russia's rejection of debt without consulting its creditors sent shock waves around the world and started a panic flight of investors from Brazil and other Latin American countries. Brazil has Latin America’s biggest economy.

While help for Brazil is coming. there was no word at the meetings on when the suspended IMF Russia package would be resumed.

Camdessus said stability in Russia depends more on the willingness of the Russian parliament to support economic reform.

As the IMF-World Bank meetings ended, the US dollar continued to drop dramatically, rolling the stock market as

well. T^ie dollar suffered its biggest two-day drop Thursday against the Japanese yen in 25 years as panic selling swept the world's 1.5 trillion dollar-a-day currency markets. The free fall was blamed in large part on hedge funds, the once-obscure investments favoured by the wealthy.

Hedge funds have been dumping dollars in recent days on the belief the dollar will weaken further as prospects for the US economy darken.

In Tokyo on Friday, the dollar was trading at 118.18 yen on the Tokyo foreign exchange market, down 4.18 yen from its level of 122.36 yen Thursday.

Clinton, trying to put the {(reenback's plunge in the best ight, argued that it would be

good for American exporters by making their products cheaper on overseas markets, and a stronger yen could boost Japan's moribund economy as well.

"The yen got too weak." he told reporters at the White House. "It led, for example, to breathtaking increases in imports of Japanese steel, which hurt a lot of our people, our industry and our workers.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell as much as 274 points before recouping most of those losses in later afternoon trading. The Dow still posted its fourth straight losing session, down 9.78 at 7,731.91.

Even before the dolor's de-, cline, investors were upset that weeklong talks in Washington

on the global economic system had produced no major new plan.

Both Camdessus and World Bank President James Wolfensohn took exception to the market's belief that the meetings of their 182 nation organizations had dissolved into disputes over how to solve the global economic crisis.

Camdessus agreed that a number of new proposals had been advanced by different countries.

Wolfensohn said there two agencies were moving forward on a programme to make their organisations more open, to improve regulation of banks around the world and to provide billions of dollars in assistance to countries hit by the crisis.