GLOBAL MARKETS-Wall St set for rally, euro boosted by China

* World stocks gain as Wall Street seen sharply up

* BP still under pressure

* Euro boosted by China comment

By Jeremy Gaunt, European Investment Correspondent

LONDON, June 10 (Reuters) - World stocks turned positive on Thursday with Wall Street looking set to open with strong gains while the euro rose, in part on supportive comments from the influential head of China's national pension fund.

The European Central Bank and Bank of England both kept interest rates unchanged, as expected.

European shares shrugged off earlier losses and joined in a global rally aided by a near 50 percent surge in Chinese exports in May, data that ran counter to persistent fears the global economy was starting to falter amid euro zone debt woes.

That helped Asian stocks gain with Japan's Nikkei <.N225> ending up 1.1 percent. The FTSEurofirst 300 <.FTEU3> was up 0.5 percent.

Overall, MSCI's all-country world index <.MIWD00000PUS> was up 0.3 percent and the Thomson Reuters Equity Global Index <.TRXFLDGLPU> rose 0.6 percent.

BP <.BP.L> remained under pressure. U.S. officials are pushing the firm to forego their dividend because of the likely costs associated with the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The company is a heavyweight in European indexes. It represented more than 8 percent of the FTSE 100 <.FTSE) in mid-April, before recent losses. [ID:nLDE6590BK]

The BP share price was down 5 percent, having earlier lost more than 10 percent on the day.

"BP is such a big player and is really causing jitters across Europe," said Will Hedden, sales trader at IG Index.

FIRMING EURO

The euro got a boost when the head of China's national pension fund said the currency would weather Europe's debt crisis.

Dai Xianglong, chairman of $114 billion China's National Social Security Fund, said the euro would gradually stabilise and that the U.S. fiscal deficit remained a big concern, tempering safe-haven demand for the dollar. [ID:nTOE659041]

The comments helped lift the euro back above $1.20 . There have been some concerns on currency markets that the debt crisis would persuade central banks including China's to cut back on their euro reserves.

Dai is a former governor of China's central bank.

The euro was up half a percent against the dollar at $1.2041. It has risen about 1.5 percent since hitting a four-year low of $1.1876 on trading platform EBS on Monday.

Euro zone bond yields were slightly higher.

(Additional reporting by Joanne Frearson)

(Editing by Jason Webb, John Stonestreet)