The Ministry of Defence (MoD) will provide 19,000 service personnel to cover the work of 52,000 civilian firefighters should they decide to strike over pay.

Firefighters will begin voting September 27 on whether to stage a national strike to underline their demands for a 40-percent pay rise.

According to an MoD document, 12,500 service personnel will be made available for firefighting while a further 6,500 staff will operate as administrators, security guards and radio controllers.

Around 35,000 of Britain's firefighters -- two-thirds of the service's 52,000 staff -- are involved in frontline firefighting.

The MoD also admitted that its offer of 19,000 personnel could be reduced, depending on service demands.

Defence experts have already warned that such a call-up of service staff may upset the military's ability to contribute to a possible US-led strike on Iraq.

"MoD's ability to provide an adequate level of emergency fire cover will be balanced with other demands on service resources," says the report.

"It is not possible to say at this time whether the support would have to be curtailed."

Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott's office, which is overseeing contingency plans in the event of strike action, said 887 aging military fire trucks, popularly known as Green Goddesses, will be on hand to fight fires.

Of those, 331 will carry specialist breathing equipment.

"We have quite clearly said from the outset that the Ministry of Defence would not be seeking to replicate the current fire-fighting capability, but they would be seeking to minimise as far as possible the danger to human life," a spokesman for Prescott's office said Thursday.

The firefighters, whose last strike 25 years ago ran for nine weeks, are demanding a 40-percent raise to bring their salaries up to 30,000 pounds (46,500 dollars, 47,500 euros) per year.

Meanwhile, Britain's military does not possess enough medics to meet the tasks of involvement in any war against Iraq, the former head of Defence Medical Services said in a television interview broadcast late Wednesday.

"I don't believe that we have sufficient, certainly in the regular forces, we don't have sufficient personnel to meet all the tasks that might be out on the services," John Baird, Surgeon General for the MoD's medical arm from 1997 to 2000, told BBC's Newsnight programme.

"I think if we are putting British troops into the field we must provide our own medical cover for our people, I really believe that. I think it's dreadful for morale if we couldn't," Baird warned.

Armed Forces Minister Lewis Moonie dismissed the claims.

"We would be able to deploy sufficient (field hospitals), both from our regular forces and from reserves," he told the same programme.

"There has never been any secret about the fact that we would use reserves if we had a large-scale deployment to put into the field, and that is what we will do," Moonie added.

bcp/bm

Nampa-AFP WEB story ENDS (NAMPA 190254)

World News Headlines Of The Last 48 Hours

•  SA slams Zim impasse
•  Zim bans visit by Elders
•  No clashes in eastern Congo after pullback
•  AU warns against piracy
•  US teen lives 118 days without heart
•  Irate man wields bat to liberate cat
•  Cope like Jesus's donkey - Zuma
•  Africa rejoices over Obama win, but seeks own answers
•  China to overhaul battered dairy industry
•  UN says Congo rebels pulling back 'in hundreds'
•  Doctors transplant windpipe
•  Rwandan suspect extradited to France
•  Tiny, long-lost primate rediscovered in Indonesia
•  Indian navy sinks pirate 'mother ship'
•  Mbeki to review Zimbabwe constitution bill
•  Pudgiest UK pets to slim
•  50 000 displaced by floods