SHANGHAI: London copper rose on Wednesday after falling for three sessions, as the dollar fell and markets waited for Greece's final steps to implement a debt deal and avert a messy default, but lack of buying from China capped gains.
Three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange rose 0.66 percent to $8,470.50 a tonne by 0251 GMT, paring losses from the previous session. Copper has been falling since it hit a five-month high of $8,765 a tonne last week. However, it is still up more than 10 percent so far this year.
The most-traded May copper contract on the Shanghai Futures Exchange traded up 1.08 percent at 60,730 yuan a tonne.
"The Greece saga is just dragging and dragging -- there's no sense of closure and this week we're going to see more of the same," metals analyst Edward Meir at INTL FCStone said.
"The markets are shifting their focus away from Greece, which is almost discounted, and they're looking now more to China. January imports were down and February is also likely to be down. It doesn't look that hot over there right now."
Euro zone finance ministers dropped plans on Tuesday for a special face-to-face meeting on Greece's new international bailout, saying political party chiefs in Athens had failed to provide the required commitment to reform.
In China, the world's top copper consumer, demand has yet to pick up after its week-long Lunar New Year holidays late in January, in part due to lower order visibility on products for export to debt-laden Western economies.
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