KIEV: Members of the Ukrainian troop contingent in Iraq want pay raises or plane tickets home on grounds that the guerilla war they are being forced to fight is nothing like the peacekeeping operation army recruiters promised them.

A petition from troop representatives in Iraq to Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma complained conditions in Iraq are "highly dangerous" and "a true guerilla war" and so violate the terms of contracts which hired them to serve under US command as peacekeepers.

Nina Karpacheva, an opposition MP, made the petition public last month. The document demands pay raises, improved living conditions, and combat pay bonuses. The 1,650-man Ukrainian Brigade is the fourth-largest foreign contingent in Iraq.

It is stationed in Iraq's central Wasit province, a predominantly Shia region which saw a dramatic increase in the scale of attacks against foreign occupation troops last April.

US-mandated priorities of patrolling actively to seek out and destroy insurgents are obliging Ukrainians "to participate in full-scale combat operations," for which the Ukrainians lack sufficient training, equipment, and pay, the petition said.

A Ukrainian private serving in Iraq earns around 650 dollars a month. The sum is roughly ten times the contract of a private under contract in Ukraine. Polish, Kazakh, and American army privates in Iraq however receive around 1,000, 1,200, and 3,000 dollars a month for performing the same duty, and are generally better equipped, an article in Segodnya newspaper reported.

"We are paying our soldiers as if they were peacekeeping in Liberia or Lebanon (where Ukraine troops serve under UN command)" Karpacheva said. "Iraq is a real war - and our soldiers' contracts say nothing about that."

"Every single Ukrainian in Iraq is a volunteer, and he knew perfectly what he was getting into when he signed the contract," said Colonel Rustam Korosevetsky, a Ukrainian Army spokesman.

Ukrainian media has identified Sergeants Oleksander Yastremsky, Oleksei Mironov and Serhy Kichiriuk and privates Aleksei Potapenko, Oleksander Koptelov and Volodymyr Doroshenko as having filed complaints with Karpacheva after commanders rejected their requests to be sent home because their contracts with the Ukrainian army said nothing about hunting down and fighting Iraqi insurgents, often with minimal support.-dpa