By Sethuraman N R
REUTERS - Gold inched down on Monday on a stronger dollar, moving away from a 5-month high hit in the previous session, although geopolitical tensions continued to buoy safe-haven demand for the precious metal.
Top aides to U.S. President Donald Trump differed on Sunday on where U.S. policy on Syria was headed after last week's attack on a Syrian air base, while U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson warned the strikes were a warning to other nations, including North Korea.
Spot gold was down 0.1 percent at $1,252.20 per ounce by 0319 GMT, while U.S. gold futures had dropped 0.2 percent to $1,254.30.
Spot gold hit its highest since Nov. 10 at $1,270.46 on Friday and crossed the 200-day moving average. But, it failed to close above that key resistance level.
The dollar index on Monday rose as much as 0.15 percent to over 3-week highs at 101.340.
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"Somehow gold is keeping its $1,200-$1,250 range intact even thought it keeps rising and falling," said Mark To, head of research at Hong Kong's Wing Fung Financial Group.
"I don't think it can have a further upside as even though the (U.S. interest) rate hike expectations have come down; the direction of hikes and monetary tightening are quite clear."
The U.S. Federal Reserve might in the future avoid raising interest rates at the same time that it begins the process of shrinking its $4.5 trillion bond portfolio, prompting only a "little pause", New York Fed President William Dudley said on Friday.
Gold's safe-haven appeal has been bolstered by mounting geopolitical tensions, with a U.S. official telling Reuters on Saturday that a U.S. Navy strike group will be moving towards the western Pacific Ocean near the Korean peninsula as a show of force.
The bullish sentiment on gold was also underpinned by U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission data that showed speculators raising their net long position in COMEX gold for the third straight week in the week to April 4.
However, Reuters technical analyst Wang Tao said spot gold may fall to $1,241 per ounce, as suggested by its wave pattern and a Fibonacci retracement analysis.
Meanwhile, spot silver dropped 0.2 percent to $17.92 an ounce, after hitting its best since Feb. 27 at $18.47 in the previous session.
Platinum declined 0.5 percent to $947 an ounce, while palladium fell 0.7 percent to $796.10.
(Reporting by Nallur Sethuraman in Bengaluru; Editing by Joseph Radford)