The west is unstable with fighters from three countries involved

The United Nations Security Council has voted unanimously to send a new peacekeeping mission to Ivory Coast to try to enforce a fragile ceasefire between government and rebel troops.

The new resolution authorises the establishment of a small force of up to 76 military observers in the West African nation, which has suffered eight months of civil war.

The resolution was adopted just hours after the Security Council postponed a fact-finding mission to West Africa which would have included a stop in Ivory Coast.

Ivory Coast, the world's leading cocoa producer, was thrown into chaos by a mutiny last September which grew into a full-scale rebellion, with rebels seizing control of the north of the country.

Co-ordinating role

Greg Barrow, the BBC's correspondent at UN headquarters in New York, says the token force will work alongside UN humanitarian agencies and the UN special representative.

The mission, known by the acronym Minuci, will include 26 military officers and is expected to play a co-ordinating role between the existing West African and French forces on the ground in Ivory Coast and to monitor the implementation of the peace agreement.

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"An additional 50 officers may be progressively deployed when the secretary general determines that there is a need and that security conditions permit," Resolution 1479 said.

Under the resolution the mission is set to last for six months.

A larger peace force was asked for by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, but the United States was reported to have asked for it to be trimmed down.

Britain's ambassador to the UN, Jeremy Greenstock, who was to have led a council delegation to seven West African nations, said Minuci "will make an immediate difference even though it is not a weapon-moving force itself."

Spreading conflict

Security Council members have expressed growing concern about the regional dimension of the crisis with armed groups from Liberia and Sierra Leone crossing into Ivory Coast to fight on one side or another.

The Council was due to depart for the region on Thursday for a mission designed to examine new ways of ending conflict across West Africa.

Diplomatic sources say the trip is being delayed to ensure that senior ambassadors will be in New York while sensitive negotiations continue over a draft resolution designed to map out a plan for the political and economic reconstruction of Iraq.

Our correspondent says UN diplomats are loathe to admit it publicly, but the move to delay the trip will only reinforce perceptions that Africa is rarely at the top of the Council's agenda.

Although the Ivory Coast is still divided with rebels holding the second biggest city, Bouake, and much of the north, a government of national unity was formed in March.

A ceasefire was declared last week, which all sides in the conflict promised to abide by, but western areas bordering Liberia remain volatile.