UNITED NATIONS, July 30: The UN Security Council voted on Wednesday to disband its peacekeeping mission to the volatile border between Eritrea and Ethiopia after Eritrea forced out most of the UN troops.

The mandate for the 1,700-strong force expires on Thursday.

The council unanimously approved a resolution drafted by Belgium that calls for the mission to be terminated and all peacekeeping personnel to be withdrawn.

The resolution calls on the two sides “to show maximum restraint and refrain from any threat or use of force against each other, and to avoid provocative military activities.”

The United Nations withdrew its peacekeeping force from the border in February after Eritrea cut off fuel supplies. The force had been in place since 2000 after a two-year war between the Horn of Africa neighbours that killed some 70,000 people.

Eritrea is angry that the UN has not enforced a ruling by an independent boundary commission awarding most disputed border territory, including the town of Badme, to Eritrea.

The resolution also called on both Ethiopia and Eritrea to adhere to the peace agreement they signed in Algiers in 2000 while condemning Eritrea’s “lack of cooperation” with UNMEE.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has warned that the withdrawal of the peacekeepers could spark renewed conflict on the 1,000 km frontier.

His spokeswoman Michele Montas said after the resolution passed that Ban regretted the demise of UNMEE but hoped “that the parties would be able break the current stalemate and create conditions necessary for the normalisation of their relations, which is key to peace and stability in the region.”

Originally the United Nations wanted to extend UNMEE’s mandate and keep small monitoring missions on both sides of the border, or UNMEE liaison offices in Asmara and Addis Ababa, but negotiations on the issue collapsed, council diplomats said.

One Western diplomat said that Eritrea was not alone in causing trouble, since Ethiopian troops have refused to leave territory the boundary commission said belonged to Eritrea.

“Both sides have behaved badly in different ways,” the diplomat said on condition of anonymity.

Ethiopia has offered to hold talks with Eritrea but Asmara says Addis Ababa must first withdraw from Eritrean territory.

Eritrea’s UN Ambassador Araya Desta said that Asmara did not want a military confrontation but was fed up with he said was Ethiopia’s occupation of Eritrean territory.

“We have a right to take our land, to do anything possible to take back our territories,” Desta said. “I don’t envisage at this stage any use of military force to do that.”

Asmara says a November 2007 “virtual demarcation” of the border by the now-defunct boundary commission ended the issue.

Ethiopia says Eritrea is illegally massing troops on the border in a supposedly demilitarised zone and it wants to discuss the border demarcation further.

The Eritrea-Ethiopia dispute is part of a set of regional tensions that extends into Somalia and into Djibouti, whose forces clashed with Eritrean troops last month.—Reuters