Comments from Italy G8 finance ministers' meeting

LECCE, Italy (Reuters) - Following are comments from policymakers at a meeting of Group of Eight finance ministers in southern Italy on Friday and Saturday.

IMF MANAGING DIRECTOR DOMINIQUE STRAUSS-KAHN

On dollar:

"I don't see the dollar as being weak, I think the dollar has been today correctly valued by the market.

"We see a dollar which today is stronger than one year ago....so I don't see today a weak dollar and I don't forecast that we would have to expect many changes in the coming time."

On economy:

"We have to stay very careful. The recovery is weak. Many actions still need to be taken. The social costs will continue."

"Even if the green shoots are real, growth as an average will only come back at the beginning of 2010 which means an unemployment peak at the beginning of 2011."

"When you look at the bank spreads they are still very high indicating that the stress on the financial sector is still important."

"I think it is a good news that we had to revise our (2010 growth) forecast upward. But please please don't overestimate the change, the risks are still very big."

"The idea that the crisis may be behind us is much to early at the same time of course we have to think about the exit strategy."

ITALIAN ECONOMY MINISTER GIULIO TREMONTI ON STRESS TESTS

"In Europe we haven't started to talk together about stress tests either national or European, secret or public."

"In Europe there is a national but standardized system (of stress tests) applied so far in Italy, for example, with positive results."

ON SPECULATION:

"Speculation is coming back, a certain type of finance is raising its head again and doing the same not very nice things it was doing until last summer. Concern about this came not just from Italy but from everybody, there is a return of speculation on derivative and commodity markets."