Officials not looking at specific rate freeze time

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. banking regulators, at the moment, are not looking at a specific number of years to provide relief for distressed subprime mortgage borrowers, the director of the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight said on Monday.

"I don't think they are agreeing on a specific number at this point but they all agree that this (temporary relief) should be done," James Lockhart told Reuters on the sidelines of a housing forum.

"Different people may need different timeouts too," Lockhart said about a framework being pushed by U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on temporarily freezing interest rates on subprime mortgages.

(Reporting by John Poirier; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama,)