LONDON According to a new report from the coalition to stop the use of child soldiers, three hundred thousand children under-18 are participating in hostilities in some 41 countries affected by serious ongoing armed conflict.

The report is highly critical of Britain - one of the few Western countries to use minors in combat: "The United Kingdom has persistently objected to raising the international minimum age for voluntary recruitment and participation in hostilities to 18."

"Within Europe the UK has the lowest minimum age for recruitment, the highest recruitment of under-18s into the regular armed forces and the lowest deployment age. The UK is also the only European country to send minors routinely into battle," it says.

One of the worst affected countries is Sierra Leone, where thousands of children have been forcibly recruited into some of the most vicious fighting in the world today.

One former child soldier at Caritas-Makeni's Lunghi Interim Care Center described how he had taken part in cross-border raids into Guinea. There they would surround villages and press gang the youths into rebel forces - a method similar to that used by the Revolutionary United Front several years ago.

While hundreds of kids have been demobilized in recent weeks, there is concern that many children in the Civil Defense Force will fail to be counted. The disarmament process requires one weapon to be handed over for each person entering demobilization. As each CDF detachment consists of about 30 people (about a third them children) sharing around three weapons, care workers fear the numbers are severely under-reported.

Although, unlike those abducted by the RUF, children serving in pro-government militias such as the Kamajors and Gbethis are mostly volunteers, Alphonso Bagni of Caritas said: "Children serving in the CDF have often been as corrupted by the use of arms as those with rebel units."

"Ten-year old kids fighting on the front line or demanding money while manning road-blocks often end up almost as badly socialized as the children abducted by their opponents."

The danger of failing to demobilize pro-government militias was demonstrated by an incident involving the West side boys last year.

Theoretically on the side of the government, following the derailment of the peace process in May 2000, they began a campaign of pillage and looting that culminated in the kidnap of British military advisers in August. In September British troops raided their hideout. the captives were freed but a rescuer was killed.

Olara Otunnu, UN special representative for Children and Armed Conflict, explains the urgency of giving Africa's lost generation a stakeholding in peace: "They have no choice but to deal with the children of war. They could be sitting on a time-bomb."

Rory McGovern, of the coalition, said: "What happens in Sierra Leone will be a litmus test for efforts to stop child soldiering around the world... the international community knows what is needed - now we need to see the resources and political will to make it work."

Due to the sensitivity surrounding the use of child soldiers in Sierra Leone, and the stipulation that no one under 18 is deployed in the new army being established by Britain's Military Training Team (MATT), none of the Army's estimated 5,000 17-year -olds are deployed there.

The UN recently forbade the use of under-18s in peacekeeping but British troops in the NATO-led K-for and S-for have no such restrictions.

Coalition Spokesperson Lisa Alfredson said: "It's ironic that Britain should itself recruit at the age of 16 and insist that the armies it is training should have a minimum recruitment age of 18."

Although Britain has signed the optional protocol to the convention on the rights of the child, the May 2000 amendment to the International Law Governing the Rights of Children which stipulates 18 as the minimum age for recruitment, it has exercised "an interpretative declaration" on deployment, according to DPA.