Istanbul (AsiaNews / Agencies) - The Saudi central bank governor, Muhammad al-Jasser has denied that his country has had talks with other Gulf countries, along with China and France to abandon the dollar as the currency for the purchase and the sale of oil.

Al-Jasser was referring to an article that appeared today in the British newspaper The Independent that claimed the oil producing countries and their largest customers, such as China and Brazil, held a secret meeting to replace the dollar as a bargaining chip in the oil trade.

For Al-Jasser the article is "absolutely wrong" and in discussions there is "absolutely nothing" about the issue cited by the newspaper.

Because of the "revelations" of the Independent, the dollar has weakened against the euro, falling to 1.4749 (dollars per euro). After the Saudi statement, the dollar recovered to 1.4713.

The author, Robert Fisk, a renowned Middle East correspondent, said that a proposal emerged from the secret encounter to trade oil with an array of currencies including the Japanese Yen, Chinese Yuan, the Euro, gold and a new unified currency to be established among the Gulf countries. According to Fisk, many finance ministers, including Russia, China, Japan, Brazil and France have for a long time been discussing the possibility of abandoning the use of the dollar in oil trade. According to the journalist, the dollar will be abandoned by 2018.

In recent years the issue has been frequently debated. Iran, too, several years ago, tried to fix the price of its oil not in dollars, but even today the sale of its production is done in dollars.