UNITED NATIONS, July 31, 2008 (AFP) - The United Nations said its mission monitoring the Ethiopia-Eritrea border dispute (UNMEE) would cease operations at midnight Thursday (0400 GMT Friday), a day after the Security Council voted to end its mandate.

'As of midnight tonight, (UNMEE) will have ceased operations,' UN spokeswoman Michele Montas told reporters, quoting the mission as saying it would remove its equipment and other assets from the Ethiopian side starting Thursday.

An estimated 320 military personnel and 130 civilian staff still in Ethiopia were expected to depart by midnight, she added.

UNMEE's troops and equipment left Eritrea after Asmara refused to provide the mission with diesel fuel in February, effectively crippling its operations.

Montas said the 270 UNMEE civilian staffers still in Eritrea would soon leave.

Wednesday, the 15-member Security Council voted unanimously to end the mission's mandate to monitor the tense Eritrean-Ethiopian border along which a total of some 200,000 troops from both sides are now deployed, fueling fears of a new flare-up.

The UN council's decision came in response to crippling restrictions imposed by Eritrea on the operation of UNMEE and Ethiopia's refusal to recognise a binding verdict by an international boundary panel that granted the flashpoint border town of Badme to Eritrea.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon expressed hope that the parties would be able to break the current stalemate and reaffirmed his offer of good offices 'remains available to the parties to help them implement the Algiers Agreements.'

UNMEE had been tasked since 2000 with overseeing implementation of the Algiers peace deal, which ended a two-year war between the two bitter Horn of Africa neighbors that killed 70,000 people.