IMF chief says sees no global recovery before '09

JERUSALEM, May 14 (Reuters) - The International Monetary Fund (IMF) does not expect the global economy to recover before 2009, its chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn said on Wednesday.

Strauss-Kahn told a conference in Jerusalem to mark Israel's 60th birthday that while a "large part" of a global financial crisis was "probably" over, he did not foresee an end to the economic slowdown before next year.

"It's too early to know if the financial crisis is really behind us," Strauss-Kahn told a session at the conference on the global economy. "Probably a large part of the financial crisis is behind us, but it is difficult to know if everything is behind us."

"How long will the slowdown last? I don't see a recovery before 2009," he said, noting that emerging markets were doing well despite problems in the United States and other developed economies.

Strauss-Kahn also said that along with the subprime mortgage crisis, one of the biggest problems to solve was imbalances between global currencies, with some undervalued and some overvalued. He did not give specifics.

Rising oil, commodity and food prices also remained a drag on the global economy, he said. (Reporting by Steven Scheer and Rebecca Harrison; editing by Stephen Nisbet)

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