But minister Jim Murphy insisted the bill would have safeguards built in.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme he is thinking of giving House of Commons committees a legal veto over any proposals.

'Astonishing powers'

The bill is intended to allow ministers to axe uncontroversial "red tape" without the time-consuming need for full parliamentary scrutiny.

Mr Clarke, chairman of the Conservatives' democracy task force, said legislation was needed to tackle red tape but said there needed to be explicit safeguards, not just verbal promises from ministers.

Law experts at Cambridge University have also voiced concern about the potential impact of the bill.

The Cambridge University academics, headed by Professor John Spencer QC, warned in a letter to The Times newspaper: "If passed, the government could rewrite almost any act and, in some cases, enact new laws that at present only Parliament can make."

In its current form, the planned new law could allow the government to curtail or abolish jury trial, place people under house arrest, rewrite immigration laws or sack judges, they said.

Competitive edge

Mr Murphy told Today that previous legislation to streamline the burden of regulation had not worked.

The government was taking action to ensure the UK remained competitive, he said.

"I have given assurances that there are more safeguards on the face of this bill than before, that we will have statutory consultation, we will not do anything that is highly controversial and the relevant select committees of the House of Commons will have a veto on every single proposal," he said.

Mr Murphy said he would look at making the veto plan part of the legislation.

The army chief did not say when the plotters were detained but added that those who renounced their membership in the plot had not been kept in detention.

Military sources said at least 14 junior officers are under investigation in connection with the plot.

Esperon said some of the ringleaders had been involved in a failed military mutiny in July 2003, when about 200 soldiers seized part of Manila's financial district to demand Arroyo's resignation.

"We are not saying that we have discovered all the participants," Esperon warned Wednesday.

"What we are saying is we have taken possession of a list of names and many more are being confessed and we believe that the primary, the prime movers of these destabilization moves, are now in our hands and under investigation."

Earlier this week armed forces chief of staff General Generoso Senga played down rumors of a fresh coup attempt against Arroyo, who survived an impeachment complaint in parliament last year arising from allegations she stole the May 2004 presidential election.

Esperon said the plot involved establishing a junta and abolishing democratic institutions. It was uncovered in December with the seizure of the conspirators' manifesto entitled "The Last Revolution", he said.

"It outlined the bases of operations of these destabilizers towards the establishment of a revolutionary government that will work in what they called the national recovery program. It will be headed, it will be led by a junta composed of military men and other nominees," Esperon said.

Conspirators met several times in January in different Manila hotels, he said, adding that the operation was to be called "Oplan Hackle".

About 200 detainees are in custody and on trial for the failed 2003 mutiny led by several junior officers. Esperon said the plan was for them to escape from military custody on the day the coup was launched.

Had the group taken power there would have been a "consolidation which would include the abolition of democratic institutions, including the House of Representatives, the Senate, the judiciary, and other democratic institutions."

After the plot was uncovered, "we confronted the leaders of the Magdalo and tried to segregate them from the others," Esperon said, referring to the detained leaders of the July 2003 mutiny.

However, five of them escaped on January 17. Two of the five, Marine Captain Nicanor Faeldon and Army First Lieutenant Lawrence San Juan, have since been recaptured.

Esperon said investigators later discovered a longer list of the other supposed participants and confronted them.

"As a result of that, many officers have confessed participation and have confessed" to attending planning sessions for the coup, he added.

Esperon said several conspirators have confessed that the group took part in ceremonies in which they mixed their blood with wine and drank it.

As for those who refused to renounce their membership in the cabal "we are now restraining them, and probably and most likely will file charges against them."

The latest talks began with the government's chief negotiator, Nimal Siripala de Silva, and the Tamil Tigers' Anton Balasingham shaking hands, the AFP news agency reports.

"Strengthening of the implementation of the ceasefire itself is an extremely important agenda," Mr Solheim told reporters as he convened the talks at a secluded chateau just outside Geneva.

Ahead of the talks, the Tamil Tigers said six men in military uniforms had attacked one of their posts in eastern Batticaloa district on Wednesday, killing one of their members.

"The attack has raised serious doubts in the minds of Tamil people about the sincerity of the government in taking part in direct talks," the rebels said on their website.

The army denied involvement, calling the allegations "baseless and malicious".

Prayers

In the northern town of Jaffna, Hindu, Christian and Muslim clergy led prayers for peace at a public hall to coincide with the talks.

The BBC's Imogen Foulkes in Geneva says diplomats are playing down hopes the talks can achieve anything more than restoring some stability in Sri Lanka.

"If they fail, I really do believe there will be war," an unnamed European diplomat is quoted as saying by Reuters.

At least 120 people - including about 80 soldiers and sailors and many civilians - have died in the upsurge of violence, which began soon after Mahinda Rajapakse assumed the presidency in November but has abated since the deal to hold talks was reached last month.

The attacks on the military have been blamed on the rebels, who deny involvement.

Tamil Tiger supporters say more than 40 Tamils have been killed by the security forces in a series of attacks since the start of December. Others blame some of those deaths on the rebels or other armed groups.

The talks are being held in Geneva after the Tigers refused to negotiate in any Asian country.

More than 60,000 people died during two decades of conflict in Sri Lanka.

The Tamil Tigers want autonomy for minority Tamils in the north and east. President Rajapakse has said the solution to the conflict lies in a unitary state.

"I don't have a date, a present date," he said. "It has to be emerging from a dialogue between President Préval, myself, the U.N. and other countries, because all are holding their hands together to keep peace in the country."

Mr. Préval and Mr. Aristide were once close. Mr. Préval was briefly Mr. Aristide's prime minister when the latter was president in the early 1990's, then served as president himself, from 1996 to 2001, until Mr. Aristide was elected again. Many considered Mr. Préval a seat-warmer, holding the office in anticipation of his mentor's re-election.

Both men enjoy broad support among the peasantry in Haiti, one of the poorest nations on earth.

But while Mr. Préval has indicated that he does not oppose Mr. Aristide's return, the relationship is likely to be delicate. Mr. Aristide fled the presidency into exile two years ago during an uprising backed largely by the nation's elite, amid accusations that his government was corrupt and had waged a campaign of violence against its rivals.

American officials pressed Mr. Aristide to leave, and he later claimed that he had been kidnapped by the United States and France - a claim the two governments categorically deny.

In his interview with SABC, Mr. Aristide said he recognized Mr. Préval's legitimate election as his country's leader.

"He is the president of the country," he said. "We have to support him while he will be respecting the will of the Haitian people, because the Haitian people never wanted people to betray them. They voted for the return of democracy."

Haitians voted on Feb. 7, but official results were delayed for more than a week as officials debated allegations of fraud.

Details of the research from the University of Leicester, UK, appear in the latest edition of Current Biology.

The technique is based on work comparing the Y chromosomes of men with the same surname. The Y chromosome is a package of genetic material found only in males.

It is passed down from father to son, just like a surname.

'Cut down'

"The evidence would not be hanging on the Y chromosome, all it would give you is an investigative tool to prioritise a sub-set of your suspects," said co-author Dr Mark Jobling from the University of Leicester.

Mining the information would require building a database of at least 40,000 surnames and the Y chromosome profiles associated with them.

Dr Jobling emphasises the limitations of the method; it could have some predictive power in just under half the population, after the most common surnames like Smith, Taylor and Williams have been excluded.

But he says it has the potential to cut down on the police workload.

"If you had a big enough database, it would give you from your crime scene sample a list of names," Dr Jobling, from the University of Leicester, told the BBC News website.

"That would help you prioritise your suspect list. Some investigations have very large suspect lists, in the thousands."

The Leicester researcher said police could consult the Y chromosome and surname database to help prioritise their search in cases where a crime scene sample had failed to turn up matches in the national DNA database.

"You might have a situation where the Y chromosome predicts 25 names. So you could go and see in the pool of suspects whether the names are there," Dr Jobling explained.

"If they are... you could then ask them for a DNA sample and do conventional DNA profiling to see if they match the crime scene sample."

Tested pool

Over time, the Y chromosome accumulates small changes in its DNA sequence, allowing scientists to study the relationships between different male lineages.

It follows that men with the same surname might have very similar Y chromosomes. But adoptions, infidelity, name changes and multiple founders for just one surname complicate the picture.

Crime investigations use ever more powerful tools
For the study, Turi King and colleagues from the University of Leicester recruited at random 150 pairs of men who shared a British surname and compared their Y chromosomes.

Across the sample, the authors determined that just under a quarter of the pairs had recent common ancestry.

Given the small sample size and the random recruitment, Dr Jobling said he was surprised at the strength of the signal.

Sharing a surname also significantly raised the likelihood of sharing the same type of Y chromosome, with the link getting stronger as the surname gets rarer.

Added extra

The researchers used the data to roughly test the predictive power of the method. They found the approach was most useful for less common names, with a 34% chance of prediction in the 80 least common surnames from the 150-name sample.

"This range of surnames makes up 42% of the population. So we're looking at prediction in just under half of the population. We have to exclude the Smiths and Joneses," Dr Jobling said.

The researchers extrapolated their success rate to the 25-65 no-suspect murders and 300-400 no-suspect rapes on the police books each year, and found the method could help in roughly 10 murders and 60 rapes annually.

Max Houck, a former scientist with the FBI Laboratory, and director of the Forensic Science Initiative at West Virginia University, US, commented: "I think by itself it is probably not useful - a single point of evidence - and for most evidence types that's the case.

"But if you have that and other data, it can put you more towards or more away from a particular proposition if you know the person may have an uncommon surname, and, for example, some ethnicity information.

"If it's a bit more cumulative it might push you in a particular direction," he told the BBC News website.

It was at the University of Leicester in 1984 that the technique of "DNA fingerprinting" was first developed.