UNITED NATIONS, Oct 3 (Reuters) - Eritrea has offered to implement any peace proposal recommended by the U.N. General Assembly that would end its border conflict with Ethiopia, providing it contains no preconditions.

``The dispute is about borders, pure and simple,'' Foreign minister Haile Weldensae said in a Friday address to the assembly on the conflict between the Horn of Africa neighbours in which several hundred people died in May and early June.

``I wish to declare here and now, in loud and clear terms, that Eritrea welcomes, and is ready to make an undertaking to implement, a decision by this august Assembly which provides without any preconditions for the cessation of hostilities, a ceasefire agreement and a peaceful resolution of the dispute by any method as the only acceptable solution,'' he said.

Ethiopia had agreed to a peace initiative from the United States and Rwanda that called for Eritrea to withdraw to positions held before fighting broke out.

But Eritrea has rejected this, saying a U.N. observer or peacekeeping force should be in place first. It has called for direct talks with Ethiopia, which Addis Ababa turned down.

Eritrea has also proposed demarcating the borders on the basis of colonial treaties, with binding arbitration on disputes of where the boundaries should be, the minister said.

Weldensae charged that Ethiopia ``has yet to offer a single plan or peace proposal.'' Instead it threatened war, drew up new maps and invaded his country along several border points before firing on the capital of Asmara in June, he said.

Ethiopian and Eritrean guerrillas fought side by side in a long struggle that eventually ousted Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1991. Eritrea was rewarded with independence after a referendum in 1993.

On Thursday Ethiopia's Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin addressed the Assembly, accusing Eritrean leaders of arrogance, brinkmanship, and ``irrationality bordering on the insane.''

Since the conflict, Weldensae said Ethiopia had expelled more than 20,000 Eritreans and Ethiopians of Eritrean origin, sometimes separating family members, treating them cruelly and confiscating their property.

``Yet the Ethiopian government...accused the Eritrean government of precisely the outrages and atrocities it itself has been committing,'' he said.

He invited human rights monitors to his country for an ``on the spot verification.''