(Adds U.N. comment and diplomatic protests, paragraphs 8-11)

By Louis Charbonneau

UNITED NATIONS, Feb 7 (Reuters) - Eritrea has ignored a U.N. deadline to grant peacekeepers on its border with Ethiopia access to badly needed fuel, but despite the shortfall, a U.N. official said U.N. troops are reluctant to leave because they fear war could erupt.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon set a Wednesday deadline for Eritrea to allow the U.N. peacekeepers to refuel, saying they faced a fuel crisis. But the U.N. official said on Thursday that Eritrea had ignored the deadline.

"The U.N. cannot afford to leave because it would create the conditions for a resumption of the conflict," a U.N. official told Reuters on condition of anonymity. "Abandoning our positions would sanctify a resumption of the conflict."

He said that the U.N. peacekeepers were acting as a buffer between Ethiopia and Eritrea, both of which have amassed troops on their borders. The two countries fought a 1998-2000 border war and have been deadlocked in a bitter dispute over their shared frontier.

It was not clear how long the peacekeepers could stay put with only meager fuel supplies. If Eritrea continues to deny them fuel, they eventually will have to pull out, using their emergency fuel supplies to evacuate, the official said.

Last week the U.N. Security Council renewed the mandate of the U.N. Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea, or UNMEE, for six months. The council also urged Eritrea to end its fuel blockade of U.N. staff.

But Eritrea, which contends that a continued U.N. presence on the border would be tantamount to an occupation, ignored the demand, prompting a stern warning from the council on Monday.

Several diplomats told Reuters that envoys from a number of council member states had registered protests with the Eritrean mission to the United Nations, urging the country to allow fuel supplies to reach the peacekeepers.

"I think a lot of people are relaying the message," a Western diplomat said.

The council is not expected to formally discuss the issue until it hears from Ban's office on what he has decided to do with the peacekeepers on the Ethiopian-Eritrean border.

U.N. spokeswoman Michel Montas told reporters that no decisions had been made yet.

The 1,700-member U.N. force went to the border in 2000 at the end of a two-year war that killed 70,000 people.

An independent commission charged with marking the border after the war awarded the flashpoint town of Badme to Eritrea in 2002, but Ethiopia did not withdraw. In November, the commission demarcated the line by map coordinates in a ruling that Eritrea accepted but Ethiopia rejected.

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