A southern Dutch city has incurred the ire of nearby Belgian towns by opting to move seven cannabis-vending coffee shops closer to the border to dilute the nuisance it claims is caused by drug tourism.

The city council of Maastricht voted unanimously on Tuesday to move seven coffee-shops out of the city centre to three new spots close to the Belgian border by 2010, spokesman Joseph Delsing told AFP on Wednesday.

`We hope to remove all the problems we have to these new locations and to get all the troubles out of our city centre,` he said.

But Wilfried Geraerts, spokesman for the mayor of Lanaken on the Belgian side of the border, said this was a `bad solution` and raised fears of criminality associated with the coffee shops -- establishments with special Dutch licenses to sell cannabis.

`We will fight this move in any way we can,` he said, adding that Lanaken and other affected Belgian municipalities have appointed a lawyer in the Netherlands to fight their case.

Delsing claimed that 46 percent of visitors to Maastricht coffee shops were from Belgium, 10 percent each from Germany and France, six percent from other countries and the rest from within the Netherlands.

Some 4,000 drug tourists visit the city daily.

`It is forbidden to sell cannabis in Belgium, and people have to go to the Netherlands to buy it,` said Delsing.

`The Belgian government pushes aside the problem, pushes it towards the Netherlands. It is hypocritical.`

But Geraerts said `if there weren`t any coffee shops at all there wouldn`t be a problem.`

Delsing claimed that three years of talks with Belgian authorities to try and get them on board with policing efforts to deal with heightened criminality caused by the foreign influx have proved fruitless.

Meanwhile, dozens of Dutch mayors are set to meet Friday in a bid to clamp down on problems created by coffee shop tourism.

This follows an announcement by Roosendaal and Bergen-op-Zoom, two other southern Dutch municipalities close to the Belgian border, that they were closing their coffee shops from February 1 next year.