MADRID (Reuters) - Top U.S. Federal Reserve staffer Vincent Reinhart said on Friday that experience showed it was important to draw a firm line in the fight against inflation.

Sign up for: Globe Headlines e-mail | Breaking News Alerts Reinhart, Director of the Division of Monetary Affairs at the Fed, told a panel discussion on global imbalances that import price pass-through should not prove lasting, provided expectations stay under control.

"As long as inflation expectations remain contained, relatively faster growth in prices of imported goods for a time would be associated with a temporary bulge in overall inflation but would leave no significant imprint on core inflation."

Reinhart was speaking at a conference organized by the Bank of Spain on central banking in the 21st century.

"To the extent that inflation expectations and core inflation were not impervious to more rapid core price inflation, the experience of the past few decades suggests it is important to draw a firm line at preventing inflation from picking up on a permanent basis," he said.

As the top Fed staffer on monetary issues, Reinhart presents the Federal Open Market Committee with policy options during its regular interest rate setting meetings.

His remarks join a rash of recent hawkish comments from the Fed, encouraging financial markets to bet heavily that the U.S. central bank will raise interest rates to 5.25 percent from 5.0 percent at their next meeting, on June 28-29.

Fed officials have stepped up their rhetoric after energy prices pushed the U.S. headline consumer price index up 3.5 percent in April, year-on-year, with core CPI rising 2.3 percent year-on-year.

The Fed is also wary that a weaker dollar may hit import costs. Data out earlier on Friday showed that import prices rose by 1.6 percent in May, more than twice as fast as forecast as the cost of imported petroleum and other industrial supplies climbed again.

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