(Adds comment from Argentine President) WASHINGTON/BUENOS AIRES, Oct 13 (Reuters) - Argentina wants to tie up a new deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as soon as conditions allow, President Alberto Fernandez said on Wednesday, downplaying reports he had ruled out a potential agreement this year. The comments came after IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva met on Tuesday evening with Argentine Economy Minister Martin Guzman, and the two agreed to continue working together on developing a credible IMF loan program. “We want to reach that agreement as soon as we have the right conditions,” Fernandez said on Twitter, denying local newspaper reports that he had told business owners this week that a deal could not be struck until early 2022. The IMF and Argentina, the Fund’s biggest borrower by far, have been negotiating for months toward a new Extended Fund Facility program to deal with the South American country’s $45 billion debt to the Fund after a failed record loan deal in 2018. “We will continue to pursue that dialogue,” Georgieva told reporters during the IMF and World Bank annual meetings. She said IMF staff continued to work to find a way to support Argentina and for Argentina to support itself with strong policies that would promote private sector-led growth and create more jobs. Georgieva said the discussions were focused on developing a program that would be “credible and helpful to the people of Argentina.” Economy Minister Guzman wrote on Twitter that he had held a “valuable” meeting with Georgieva to push forward talks to solve the country’s debt with the agency it cannot pay. He added that he hoped the IMF would to take steps to change its “ethos” to leave behind one “shaped by global financial powers that contributed to a more unequal and insecure world, for another favoring the sustainable development of the people.” Argentina has pledged to wrap up a new deal before the end of the first quarter of 2022 after midterm elections later this year, in which the center-left Peronist government is facing a tough challenge. (Reporting by Andrea Shalal and David Lawder in Washington and Adam Jourdan and Marta Lopez in Buenos Aires; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Sandra Maler) Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.