FRESH controversy over alleged war crimes during the Falklands

conflict flared yesterday with a newspaper report that British soldiers

face new accusations of executing wounded Argentine prisoners.

An Argentine war crimes commission was also said to accuse British

troops of using weapons banned by the Geneva arms convention.

News of the commission's unpublished report came days after Scotland

Yard sent a report of its own investigation into war crime allegations

against British soldiers to the Crown Prosecution Service.

The Director of Public Prosecutions, Barbara Mills, is now deciding

whether there are grounds to prosecute British Servicemen.

The news of the Argentine investigation, reported in the respected

Clarin daily newspaper in Buenos Aires, is bound to stoke further

controversy over the issue.

Clarin said the report carried testimonies from at least four men from

Argentine units involved in the battle for Mount Longdon between June 11

and 1,2 1982, two days before Argentina capitulated.

Former corporal Jose Carrizo said British soldiers shot him in the

head after he was taken prisoner -- a charge supported by another

soldier, Santiago Mambrin, according to the newspaper. British medics

saved Carrizo's life.

Another former soldier, Nestor Flores, said he saw British soldiers

shoot a wounded, unarmed soldier called Quintana; stab to death with a

bayonet another one named Gramissi; and toss a grenade into a foxhole

where a soldier called Delgado lay, the paper reported.

Other witnesses allegedly said the British forced prisoners to

retrieve unexploded cannon and mortar shells from battlegrounds.

Two former soldiers were said to have told the commission that British

combat jets dropped fragmentation bombs -- banned under the Geneva

convention -- on Argentine positions.

No confirmation of the report was available from Argentina's Defence

Ministry, which appointed the commission last year.

The Scotland Yard

investigation was launched after former Paratrouper Vince Bramley

published his account of the Falklands conflict in 1991.

In Excursion to Hell, he detailed allegations of brutal behaviour by a

tiny minority of his comrades, involving claims of execution of

prisoners after the battle for Mount Longdon.

Some of his allegations were later backed by a British officer who

said he witnessed the execution of a wounded Argentine soldier.

Labour MP Tam Dalyell, who has raised the issue in the Commons in the

past, said the Clarin report should be taken seriously.

''One cannot let sleeping dogs lie any longer, if these things are

being spoken of widely,'' said Mr Dalyell, MP for Linlithgow.

''My attitude to this is -- if this is being said by serious people,

we have to get to the truth. The truth may be cleansing.

''I am not saying people should be charged after all this time. But

the truth has to be laid bare if possible.''

But Mr Michael Shersby, a senior Tory back bencher who chairs the

Commonwealth Parliamentary Association Falkland Islands Group, and is an

adviser to the Police Federation, said: ''We have examined very

carefully allegations made in some quarters, notably in Bramley's book.

''I don't think any other country in the world would have gone to the

extent Britain has gone to to examine those allegations.

''Now it is up to the DPP to decide whether there are grounds for

prosecutions, and if there are, whether it is in the public interest or

not.''

Referring to allegations that British troops used weapons banned by

the Geneva convention on arms, he said: ''I have studied the matter, and

I don't know of any reports at all of British troops using equipment

which contravened the Geneva convention. That is news to me.''

He added that he had seen reports from a number of Argentine

servicemen who said they did not wish to reopen the events of the war,

recognising that all wars were tragedies.

The Ministry of Defence said it was unaware of the latest allegations.

But a spokesman added: ''The point that seems to have come across

generally from the Argentine soldiers involved is that they felt that

the British soldiers on the whole treated them with the utmost fairness

and decency.''