July 29, 2010 –   * Euro dips vs yen on Japan exporter selling

* Kiwi down, hurt by RBNZ statement on future hikes

* Dollar index dips, support seen at 81.44

By Masayuki Kitano

TOKYO, July 29 (Reuters) - The euro dipped against the yen on Thursday, pulling away from a recent two-month high on selling by Japanese exporters, while the kiwi struggled after New Zealand's central bank raised interest rates but warned further hikes could be more gradual.

The New Zealand dollar fell sharply after the Reserve Bank of New Zealand signalled the pace of further interest rate hikes would be less than earlier thought. The kiwi fell to a low near $0.7205, from about $0.7280 before the announcement.

After staging a mild recovery, the New Zealand dollar was up 0.4 percent from late U.S. trading on Wednesday at $0.7236..

"The neutral statement and revised market expectations for future rate decisions will help in taking upside pressure off the kiwi," Citi analyst Josh Williamson said.

The euro edged up 0.1 percent against the dollar to $1.3008, hovering near its 11-week high of $1.3047 hit on trading platform EBS earlier this week.

But the euro dipped 0.2 percent against the yen to 113.49 yen, pulling away from its highest in more than two months of 114.74 yen struck on trading platform EBS on Wednesday.

A trader for a Japanese bank cited euro-selling by Japanese exporters before the month-end, adding that more offers were likely to emerge if the euro rebounds and rises towards 115 yen.

"A lot of exporters are waiting at levels above 115 yen," the trader said.

The dollar dipped 0.2 percent against the yen to 87.25, extending losses after data on Wednesday showed new U.S. durable goods orders unexpectedly fell for a second straight month in June.

Still, the core measure of orders excluding aircraft and defence rose 0.6 percent in June, on top of an upwardly revised 4.6 percent jump in May, suggesting activity was not nearly as soft as the headline number suggested.

The dollar is likely to find support against the yen at levels around 86.80 yen, near the dollar's intraday low hit on Monday and Tuesday, said Teppei Ino, a technical analyst at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ.

"There aren't strong reasons to bid up the yen beyond those levels at the moment, especially ahead of key U.S. data on Friday," Ino said. U.S. second-quarter gross domestic product data is due out on Friday.

A recent string of lacklustre U.S. economic data has weighed on the greenback and led investors to cut short positions in the euro.

The single currency touched an 11-week high against the dollar earlier this week, helped by strong bank earnings and gains in European equities, following last week's favourable results of regulatory stress tests.

The dollar index was down 0.2 percent at 82.007, with near-term support around 81.44, a 50 percent retracement of the index's move from a low of 74.17 in November 2009 to a high near 88.71 in June.

The U.S. Federal Reserve's Beige Book on Wednesday pointed to a less-than-booming recovery with sluggish housing markets and sales of costly items like new cars weakening. (Additional reporting by Anirban Nag in SYDNEY and Hideyuki Sano in TOKYO; Editing by Chris Gallagher)