BUENOS AIRES Argentine President Eduardo Duhalde expressed his impatience Saturday at the slow pace of debt relief talks with the International Monetary Fund, as his top negotiator ruled out further reforms to monetary policy.

"Really, we need to go faster. In every way it is not a substantial advance, but we are on the way to putting our economy in order," Duhalde said in his weekly radio address.

Meanwhile, Economy Minister Roberto Lavagna, who extended his trip to Washington to continue talks with IMF officials, said Buenos Aires will make no further reforms to monetary policy.

"The fund accepted that we will carry on with our plan," Lavagna said over Argentina's radio Mitre network. "No one can say 100 percent that one monetary program is better than another." Argentina hopes the latest round of talks will eventually pave the way for the IMF to unlock the more than $9.5 billion in aid frozen since December, when the government ran out of money and failed to make payments on its $141-billion sovereign debt, AFP reported.

The IMF, which said Friday it would begin active negotiations on resuming aid, has insisted over the past six months that Argentina tighten its belt to qualify for assistance.

An IMF team is to travel next week to Buenos Aires to continue into the final stages of negotiations to secure a loan package for the beleaguered South American nation, trapped in a downward spiral caused by four years of recession.

After meetings with IMF Managing Director Horst Koehler Friday, Lavagna said the fund's mission was to focus on banking and finance issues -- not any immediate change in the monetary policy of Duhalde's administration.

Koehler called the discussions productive and said that two legal issues -- the reform of the bankruptcy law and the repeal of the so-called economic subversion laws -- "have been satisfactorily resolved." Lavagna assured the IMF that "substantial further progress may be expected next week on the outstanding issues concerning the central government's fiscal agreements with the provinces," Koehler said.

Koehler clarified the focus of the talks next week, honing in on four areas: the fiscal situation, the "critical problems with the banking sector," developing an "effective monetary anchor for the authorities' economic program" and reinforcing Central Bank independence.

"We will pursue discussions actively in all these areas, including through staff missions to Argentina to accelerate momentum toward a fund-supported program," Koehler said.