Japan has no intention to change its intervene policy with regard to its $838 billion official reserve assets in U.S., the world’s largest, Ministry of Finance official Masatsugu Asakawa said.

``We are pursuing no currency diversification,’’ said Asakawa, who is in charge of the government’s U.S. Treasury portfolio as head of the ministry’s foreign-exchange department. ``We did intervene to buy yen before to support it. We may again. The purpose is to avoid unnecessary fluctuations.’’ He made the comments in an interview yesterday at the ministry in Tokyo.

Japan’s $819 billion foreign currency holdings are about 22 percent of the world’s total.

Asakawa explained that Japan has used its reserves to sell dollars and buy yen when its currency was said to rate too weak.

Actually, these are Central bank purchases of U.S. debt from countries such as Japan and China that allowed the Bush administration to finance a record budget deficit.

The yen managed to be traded against the dollar at the rate of 106.86 at 2:25 p.m. in Tokyo from yesterday’s 106.88 rate in New York.