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By 12:24 GMT, the index was up by 0.68 points to 5,600.44 points, Reuters reports, with stronger mining firms helping to cancel out the losses seen elsewhere.
There were gains of between 0.1 per cent and 0.7 per cent for Anglo American Rio Tinto and Lonmin, while BHP Billiton rose by 1.3 per cent.
But drug manufacturers were lower - led by drops of 0.5 per cent and 1.2 per cent respectively for Shire and GlaxoSmithKline - and there were also decreases for some banks.
HSBC lost 1.2 per cent, however there was a 0.2 per cent climb for Royal Bank of Scotland.
The news agency reported that the trend is likely to be continued on Wall Street, where futures for the Dow Jones, the Nasdaq and the Standard & Poor's 500 all point to trading being flat at the start of the day.
Posted by Greg Secker
