DUBAI (Reuters) – The United Arab Emirates wants all its oil producing Gulf neighbours to agree a currency basket that they can use to track exchange rates should they decide to drop pegs to the dollar, the finance minister said on Wednesday.

“It not a matter of de-pegging. You need first to have a currency basket at least. And I suggest that this be a basket agreed by Gulf states,” Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid al-Maktoum said in an interview aired by Al-Arabiya television.

The UAE central bank governor said last week he was under social and economic pressure to drop the dirham’s peg to the tumbling dollar and track a currency basket including the euro to contain inflation.

The UAE would only act in concert with Saudi Arabia and three other oil producers preparing for monetary union as early as 2010, he said.