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Europe ends week higher
LONDON, England (Reuters) -- European blue chips leapt off six-year closing lows on Friday but saw their gains pared ahead of a speech by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell after U.N. arms inspectors raised hopes a war might be delayed. U.N. weapon inspector Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told the U.N. Security Council they had not found any weapons of mass destruction during their search in Iraq. They said they were still investigating and had not ruled out the possibility that Iraq does possess chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. (Full Story) "All I am hearing is that they are getting cooperation from Iraq," Anais Faraj, global strategist at Nomura, said. "The market is taking it as sign that war will be delayed. But I'd rather wait for the Powell rebuttal before I make my mind up. The U.N. basically appears to be rejecting the Powell view."
Insurance stocks such as Axa and Munich Re topped the blue chip leaderboard with gains of more than six percent after pleasing results from France's Scor. Heavily-weighted oil stocks such as TotalFinaElf also rose, helped by a bullish overnight U.S. inventories report, while renewed talk of banking consolidation boosted German banks HVB Group and Commerzbank. But a near halving in Invensys's shares after a profit warning from the British engineering firm and concerns about future dividend policy at bank Lloyds TSB helped ensure London underperformed the rest of the region. By 1700 GMT, with only Frankfurt still trading officially, the FTSE Eurotop 300 index of pan-European blue chips was up 1.47 percent at 780 points, as the narrower DJ Euro Stoxx 50 rose 3.2 percent to 2,190 points. The Eurotop 300 closed at its lowest level since February 1997 on Thursday and is up almost one percent over the week. On Wall Street, trading was also subdued ahead of the long weekend, with the Dow Jones industrial average flat and the tech-laden Nasdaq Composite up 0.34 percent. U.S. markets are closed on Monday for the Presidents Day holiday. The presentation by the Blix and ElBaradei had been seen as pivotal on whether wavering council members will authorise a U.S.-led war against Iraq or call for more inspections. The United States and Britain, who want a second U.N. resolution backing the use of force, have said they will go to war without one if necessary.
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