NEW YORK, March 8: Stocks closed slightly higher on Friday, as a March 17, deadline for Iraq to meet disarmament demands or face war fed investor hopes for resolution to a crisis that has depressed markets for months.

On a see-saw day, dismal jobs data sent market gauges sharply lower at the open before reports suggesting the United States was closing in on al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden lifted stocks to hover around the unchanged mark.

Wall Street also kept an eye on a tense meeting at the United Nations Security Council, where the United States, Britain and Spain delivered the March 17 ultimatum a day after President George W. Bush had vowed to go to war against Iraq, with or without UN approval, if Baghdad did not disarm.

The war could start in a week or two, it could be over in a week or two and the situation in the Middle East could get more calm, said Alfred Kugel, senior investment strategist at Stein Roe Investment Counsel in Chicago, adding that investors “don’t like uncertainty.”

Traders also said short-covering fueled the market’s rise. Short sellers investors who sold borrowed stock and hoped to buy it back later at a lower price covered their short positions by buying shares as the market began to climb.

The blue-chip Dow Jones industrial average ended up 0.86 per cent, or 66.04 points, at 7,740.03, according to the latest available figures. The broader Standard & Poor’s 500 Index rose 6.79 points, or 0.83 per cent, to 828.89.

The Nasdaq Composite Index reversed earlier losses and ended up 0.18 per cent, or 2.40 points, at 1,305.29.

Volume on the NYSE was active, with about 1.37 billion shares trading hands. Advancing shares outnumbered decliners by a ratio of 9 to 7. On the Nasdaq, where volume totaled roughly 1.42 billion, decliners outnumbered advancers 8 to 7.

Stocks opened sharply lower and then came back to hover around break-even for most of the session, as investors weighed dismal jobs data against reports that the United States might have a bead on bin Laden and that two of his sons had been captured.

You had a big reversal in the market. There’s a lot of cross-currents going on today, said David Memmott, head of listed block trading at Morgan Stanley.

Still, markets ended the week in the red. The Dow ended the week down 1.91 per cent, the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index fell 2.41 per cent, while the Nasdaq ended down 1.46 per cent. The Dow is down almost 8 per cent this year.

Investors will pay special attention to Thursday’s data on weekly jobless claims. The number of Americans lining up for first-time unemployment benefits is expected to total 419,000 in the week ended March 8, compared with 430,000 the previous week.

On Friday, a government report showed the US economy last month suffered its worst drop in jobs since the aftermath of the Sept 11, attacks.

Semiconductor stocks fell after Intel on Thursday said its first-quarter revenue will be flat to down slightly from a year earlier, due to weaker than expected sales of flash memory chips. Intel ended down 69 cents, or 4.13 per cent, at $16.01, while the Philadelphia semiconductor index gave up 0.51 per cent.—Reuters