LONDON, Jan 4: The British Army spent decades secretly noting the race of all soldiers with "Asiatic or Negroid features" for a quota system on non-white recruits, newly-released government files showed on Tuesday.

This practice, in a military which had for centuries officially welcomed troops from other races, persisted until at least 1975, according to official papers released to Britain's National Archives.

The quota system, which appeared to be designed so as to limit numbers of ethnic minority troops in any one unit, was considered so sensitive that it was even hidden from government ministers.

According to the papers, released under Britain's new Freedom of Information Act, army doctors were instructed to make a note of all "D factor" recruits, as those with non-North European facial features were officially designated.

Medics had considerable freedom in determining who would be classified, with one file saying it could be extended as far as someone appearing to be of Mediterranean appearance, or even a "swarthy Frenchman".

A confidential briefing paper written in November 1972 stressed that officially such race statistics were not collected, but then explained that the data was recorded on computer punch cards for later analysis.

"The determination of the characteristics is at the discretion of the various medical officers and could include such examples as Chinaman, Maltese or even swarthy Frenchman," the paper said.

The system had been in place since 1957, and "enabled us to keep a check on the numbers of non-Europeans in the corps of the Army", the briefing said. Later files reveal how sensitively the system was viewed, with one top official warning colleagues in 1974 that "we do not feel that it would be appropriate to mention it to ministers".

Two years before that, when asked by an official race relations watchdog for a breakdown of non-white soldiers, the army spent nine months deliberating before responding with the outright lie that no such data was kept.

However, the information contained in the files shows how racially unified many units were, with only one non-white soldier serving respectively in the Royal Military Police and the Intelligence Corps.

The archives do not reveal when the secret system was phased out, although the military has for some years openly published figures for the ethnic mix of the armed forces.

Such segregation is at odds with the British Army's long tradition of recruiting soldiers from a wide variety of racial backgrounds. Nepalese Gurkhas have had their own regiments within the army since 1815, and the legacy of the Empire has seen soldiers from a series of Asian and Caribbean backgrounds fight for Britain since then. -AFP