Futures edge up ahead of jobs data, Ukraine eyed

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stock index futures edged higher on Friday, with the S&P 500 set to close a fourth week of gains in five, ahead of key jobs market data and amid lingering tensions in Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin rebuffed a warning from U.S. President Barack Obama over Moscow's military intervention in Crimea, saying Russia could not ignore calls for help from Russian speakers in Ukraine.

After initially piling into assets deemed safe on Monday as tensions escalated over Crimea, investors have cautiously returned to stocks across the world. A gauge of global equities traded near a six-year high while the S&P 500 closed Thursday at a record.

U.S. hiring likely picked up enough in February to keep the Federal Reserve on track in reducing its monetary stimulus. Payrolls probably increased by 149,000 last month, according to economists surveyed by Reuters, with the jobless rate holding at a five-year low of 6.6 percent. The data is due at 8:30 a.m. EST (1330 GMT).

S&P 500 e-mini futures rose 2 points and were above fair value, a formula that evaluates pricing by taking into account interest rates, dividends and time to expiration on the contract. Dow Jones industrial average futures rose 12 points and Nasdaq 100 futures added 2.5 points.

Shares of FireEye Inc dropped 4.7 percent to $85.35 in premarket trading after the network security company priced the follow-on public offering of 14 million shares of its common stock at $82 per share.

Safeway Inc , the second-largest U.S. mainstream grocery store operator, said after the close on Thursday private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management would acquire the company in a deal valued at about $9.4 billion. Safeway shares fell 2.8 percent in premarket trading.

(Reporting by Rodrigo Campos; Editing by Bernadette Baum)