PEACE protesters were busy in Lymington on Saturday - in a march which ended at the town's police station with a demand for Tony Blair to be arrested for war crimes.

About 20 members of the New Forest Peace Group set off from the railway station and paraded with their anti-war banners through a packed market in the High Street and St Thomas's Street.

As they set off, co-founder Ann Fanning insisted that war crimes had been committed in the war on Iraq. She said: "Seriously, this war is being presented as a war of liberation, a war that has been won and a war where the end has justified the means.

"But our feelings are that it is just the opposite. We feel it is a war that is illegal, unjust, unnecessary and immoral and a war which has cost thousands of innocent lives.

"You are also supposed to look after hospitals, but that has not happened. They have secured the oil wells, but the hospitals have not had the same protection."

Her fellow group founder Joyce Woods, also from Barton-on-Sea, confirmed that the final aim of the march would be to hand in a message at the police station.

But the route through the market, she said, had been chosen in order to let people know the depth of opposition to the war.

Banners, an African drum and a petition against the war were brandished as the walk set off and protester Les Gibbons was carrying a small coffin, which he said "signifies the collateral damage done to many innocent men, women and children".

At Lymington Police Station, they had a 25-minute chat with Inspector Gerry Hutchings and he confirmed: "They expressed their views amicably and I accepted their 41-signature petition. But they have been informed that it is not within the jurisdiction of the British Police to deal with their accusations."