BANGKOK - More than 300,000 child soldiers are fighting for national and guerrilla armies around the world, a human rights pressure group said on Wednesday.

Rory Mungoven, coordinator of the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers (CSUCS), said child soldiers, combatants under the age of 18, were used in all parts of the world, especially in Africa and Asia.

About 120,000 child soldiers were deployed in armies across Africa and a further 75,000 in Asian countries, including Afghanistan, Cambodia, Myanmar and Sri Lanka.

Child soldiers had also played a major part in the militias involved in the violence in East Timor, as well as in local conflicts in India, he said.

"Precious little attention is given to this problem of child soldiers, although it is widespread," Mungoven told Reuters. "It is a dark and disturbing aspect of many modern conflicts."

CSUCS is organizing a major conference in Kathmandu from May 15-18, sponsored by several human rights groups and the United Nations Children's Fund.

"We hope the conference will add to the movement for a global ban on children under 18 being used in conflicts...and put the use of children as weapons of war beyond the pale," he said.

Mungoven said there was a growing movement around the world to ban child soldiers and classify the forced recruitment of children as a war crime.

Support for a ban was broad in Asia with backing from Thailand, Sri Lanka and Nepal, but several Western countries including the United States and Britain opposed it.

The British army, for example, recruited soldiers as young as 15 years old, he said.

"Almost all of the states in this region (Asia) recruit below the age of 18," he said.

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