Japan's Finance Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki urged Asia's developing countries to adopt more flexible exchange rates so they could better absorb economic shocks, according to the text of a speech to be delivered on Thursday. In the speech to the annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank in Istanbul, Tanigaki said high oil prices posed risks for Asia as did future economic developments in China, whose pegged yuan is the subject of intense market speculation. Many of Asia's export-driven economies are under growing international pressure, especially from Washington, to free up their carefully managed currencies to help redress global imbalances such as the huge U.S. current account deficit. His comments echoed the message from the Group of Seven rich nations and were a thinly veiled reference to China, which pegs its yuan at around 8.28 to the U.S. dollar.