Japan's premiums are a benchmark for Asia aluminium prices.

In addition to stable Indonesian demand, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh have recently imported some "reasonable" amounts of aluminium, they said.

"That's why premiums are stable here. They won't rise because these countries are not main consumers, but such demand is supporting premium levels," said one trader at a European trading house.

Moderate demand for the overhead cabling industry has been coming from Indonesia in the past few weeks, traders said.

"For India, it's cheaper to import now if you have export licences. International prices are very low now," the trader said. Indian firms with export licenses are allowed to import aluminium without paying duty, he said.

On Thursday, aluminium ended $20 down at $1,272 on the London Metal Exchange (LME) without recoveringfrom sharp technically-inspired fund selling at mid-session. It hit a $1,268 low, unseen since February 1994.

In Japan, the main Asian consumer for aluminium, traders said domestic aluminium demand was likely to shrink further before a possible pickup in the second half of next year.

Reflecting slack domestic demand, Japanese term aluminium premiums for the first quarter of next year were set at $36-$39 per tonne in late November, down from $42-$45 this quarter and about a third of the recent high of $100 in mid-1997.

"I would say the market is quite stable here even Japan's premiums fell a lot. The market in south-east Asia is still bad but not as bad as before," said another aluminium trader.

In the copper market, most traders were pessimistic after a huge build-up in LME warehouses.

LME copper stocks in all its warehouses rose a net 12,850 tonnes on Thursday, of which 6,700 tonnes had entered Singapore warehouses.

"I think the copper is from both Japan and China where the markets are very badand they need to ship the metal out for cash at year-end," said one copper trader.

South Korea also shipped routine copper into Singapore warehouses but not in a big way, traders said.

Despite low copper premiums around $3/$5 in Singapore, there was hardly any inquiry from crisis-hit south-east Asia, they said.

Thursday's build-up brought total copper stocks in Singapore to 92,075 tonnes, compared with around 63,000 tonnes in early October and about 17,000 tonnes in early September.

LME copper ended Thursday at a new 11-1/2-year. The flagship three-month copper contract ended the afternoon kerb $22 down at $1,540 a tonne.