LONDON (AP) — The Bank of England made a near unanimous decision to keep interest rates steady this month, according to minutes of the meeting released yesterday, dampening the prospect of imminent rate cuts.

Minutes from the central bank's Monetary Policy Committee meeting earlier this month showed that members voted 8-1 in favour of holding the rate at five percent.

Most committee members felt that a 0.25 percentage point reduction would make it harder to get inflation back to the bank's two percent target figure, despite evidence of slowing economic activity.

"A further reduction in bank rates this month could create the impression that the committee was trying to stabilise output growth rather than maintaining its focus on the inflation target," the minutes said.

Only one member of the committee, US-based David Blanchflower, voted for a quarter of a percentage point cut.

Blanchflower, who has previously warned that the British economy faces a possible recession if the central bank did not take swift action, said it was "important to look through the short-term spike in inflation" and instead concentrate on the "current and prospective weakness of demand".

Inflation accelerated to three percent in April from 2.5 percent the month before.

A move in consumer price inflation to more than one percentage point above the central bank's two-percent target requires central bank governor Mervyn King to write an official letter of explanation to Treasury Chief Alistair Darling.

King has written one such letter since the central bank received rate-setting independence in 1997, when inflation peaked at 3.1 percent in March 2007.

However, he has acknowledged that he expects to "write a number of open letters ... over the next year." The Bank has cut rates twice this year, by a quarter of a percentage point each time.