Raiffeisen CEO says no talks on Temir Bank -paper

VIENNA, Jan 14 (Reuters) - Raiffeisen International (RIBH.VI) Chief Executive Herbert Stepic told a newspaper he was not in talks to buy Kazakh Temir Bank TEBN.KZ, in which Kazakhstan's second-largest bank TuranAlem BTAS.KZ holds 55 percent.

"There are no negotiations at this very moment," Stepic was quoted as saying in Monday's Die Presse daily. "But it is true that we are interested in the central Asian region."

Kazakh market sources have said Raiffeisen was in talks with mid-sized Temir Bank for a while, and Stepic said in a Reuters interview in November he was in talks with several Kazakh banks.

Raiffeisen is the third-largest bank across the former communist bloc in central and eastern Europe, and its empire stretches as far as Vladivostok after it bought Russia's Impexbank in 2006.

Stepic also repeated in the Die Presse interview he was expecting the bank to reveal a net profit of at least 750 million euros ($1.1 billion) for 2007.

Raiffeisen's 2007 forecast is seen as overly cautious by analysts who on average expect a net profit of around 800 million.

The bank is scheduled to report fourth-quarter figures on March 27. (Reporting by Karin Strohecker, editing by Will Waterman)