The two men, who had no explosives on them when they surrendered Monday, had decided "they didn't want to be suicide bombers," Colonel Steve Cox told reporters.

"We are accommodating them."

Cox, who heads the Royal Marines now controlling Umm Qasr, said the pair had been ordered to conduct an unspecified suicide attack.

They were being interrogated by British intelligence officers, after which they would become prisoners of war, he said.

Other deserters who have turned themselves in to British forces here have spoken of Iraqi soldiers being forced by paramilitaries to become human bombs against US and British positions. If they refuse, they are killed on the spot.

The threat of suicide attacks has become a significant concern for coalition forces in Iraq after an Iraqi soldier killed himself and four US troops on Saturday with a car bomb at a checkpoint near the town of Najaf.

Iraq's vice president, Taha Yassin Ramadan, said Tuesday that the weekend attack was "just the beginning" and claimed that 3,000 volunteers from around the Arab world had come to Iraq to be "ticking bombs" against the US and British invaders.

SPACE.WIRE