LONDON, Aug 31: Europe's main stock markets pushed further into positive territory on Friday, boosted by sharp gains to Asian share prices as concerns over the weak US housing market receded, dealers said.

In late morning trade, London's FTSE 100 index of leading shares increased by 0.50 per cent to 6,242.80 points.

Frankfurt's DAX 30 rose 0.51 per cent to 7,558.49 points and in Paris the CAC 40 jumped 0.74 per cent to 5,634.16.

The DJ Euro Stoxx 50 index of top eurozone shares gained 0.64 per cent to 4,273.14 points.

In London, mining shares jumped as commodity prices continued to recover.

Anglo American advanced by 2.24 pc to 2,833 pence and Rio Tinto gained 1.81 pc to 3,367 pence.Elsewhere, Barclays' share price rose by 0.92 pc to 603 pence on Friday after Britain's third biggest bank denied it was facing liquidity problems amid a collapse of the US subprime mortgage market.

Barclays on Thursday confirmed it was the financial institution that had borrowed 1.6 billion pounds (2.4 billion euros, $3.2bn) from a BoE emergency lending facility on Wednesday.

Barclays, meanwhile, is competing against a European consortium to buy Dutch bank ABN Amro for about 100 million dollars, with the winner set to clinch what would be the biggest takeover in the history of banking.

In Paris, shares in the French luxury goods empire PPR shot up by 4.38 per cent to 127.19 euros on strong first-half results following its purchase of German sportswear group Puma.—AFP