ANKARA Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit elected at the weekend to ride out a storm of public anger over a financial crisis racking Turkey, refusing to sack ministers but promising new measures on Monday to settle haunted markets.

According to Reuter, a senior banking official dismissed speculation that a number of banks were in trouble after last week's 36 percent devaluation of the lira against the U.S. dollar. "These rumors... are a betrayal of the economy," banking watchdog Zekeriya Temizel said.

Ecevit said after six hours of talks with coalition partners on Saturday that his three-party administration, which had heavily staked its reputation on IMF-backed financial reforms scuppered by the crisis, was determined to work on in harmony.

"A change of ministers is out of the question," said Ecevit, who triggered the crisis on Monday by angrily and publicly attacking the country's president after an abortive meeting of the military-dominated national security council (MGK).

"The rumors spread by some circles about the government's departure have nothing to do with reality... any change in the government, as well as attempts at creating an (early) election atmosphere will damage our country. Measures that will relieve the economy will be introduced from the beginning of next week."

Opposition parties, trade unions, businessmen and newspapers have demanded the sacking of ministers over a crisis that slashed a third off the value of Istanbul stocks and sent interest rates soaring as high as 5,000 percent.

Influential newspapers attacked Ecevit's refusal to change his cabinet.

"Such basic stubbornness is as much a betrayal of this country's future as it is a breach of democratic morals," the mass-circulation ****Sabah**** newspaper said in a leader, calling for a government of technocrats to prepare Turkey for a European Union accession process that looked more distant than ever after the crisis.

Meanwhile, the governor of Turkey's Central Bank, Gazi Ercel, has resigned after a severe liquidity crisis rocking financial markets forced the government to float the Turkish lira, Turkish press reports said Sunday.

Ercel, 56, submitted his resignation to Turkish Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit on Friday, just two months before his tenure at the Central Bank was due to end, AFP quoted the liberal ****Milliyet*** daily as saying.

There has been no official confirmation of Ercel's resignation, but he would be the first senior economy bureaucrat to quit after Ecevit's three-way coalition abandoned a key currency peg on Thursday, causing the lira to slump 36.1 percent against the dollar in two days.

****Milliyet*** said the governor's resignation came after Ankara's change of monetary policy made it necessary to revise an ambitious economic program backed by a three-year, four-billion dollar standby deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).