Asian shares edge down, dollar flat as markets monitor Greece

Euro steady, Nikkei falls 0.4%

Asian shares edged down and the dollar was treading water in early Asian trade on Thursday, with investors on ice ahead of a meeting of European Union leaders later in the session as Greece continued last-minute efforts to avert a default.

Athens's talks with creditors bogged down on details, with next week's deadline to repay 1.6 billion euros to the International Monetary Fund looming, and threatening to trigger Greece's removal from the euro zone.

The EU leaders are scheduled to convene in Brussels later on Thursday.

"Expect more conflicting reports today, some positive and some negative. We have no idea how this will end," Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics, wrote in a note to clients.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was down about 0.1%. Japan's Nikkei stock index fell about 0.4% after hopes for a resolution to Greece's debt crisis helped propel it to its highest level since 1996 on Wednesday.

Wall Street logged broad losses overnight, but US stock futures edged up about 0.2%.

The euro was steady on the day at $1.1203. The dollar was also nearly flat on the day against the yen at 123.87 .

Wednesday's US gross domestic product data revealed that the final figure for the first quarter was a 0.2% contraction, a good smaller than the previously estimated 0.7%. That reinforced expectations that the US Federal Reserve is on track to raise interest rates this year, perhaps as early as September.

In commodities, US crude was nearly flat in early Asian trade at $60.23 a barrel after plunging more than 1% on Wednesday on a government report showing that an eighth straight weekly drop in US crude stockpiles was offset by a large build in refined products.