Under the 1969 version of the plan, the majority of people were to be picked up in Ontario with the second-largest group coming from British Columbia. Manitoba had the third-largest number of subversives to be arrested. In the Maritimes, only two people were targeted.

Cold War historian John Clearwater obtained the records through the Access to Information Act while researching his new book, Just Dummies: Cruise Missile Testing in Canada, which is being released Monday.

Clearwater said when it came to cruise missile testing in the 1980s, the Liberal government spent much of its time trying to mislead the public over the true extent of the country's involvement. But there was no way that Canada could have refused to test the weapon, he added.

"The U.S. saw this as a test of our resolve to be its defence partner," Clearwater noted. "We simply couldn't refuse."

His book details Canada's decision to allow the Pentagon to test cruise missiles over the country in the 1980s and the widespread protests against that. The book also reveals how an undercover RCMP officer infiltrated a peace camp set up on Parliament Hill and that the Canadian government allowed the U.S. to test its controversial neutron bomb in Quebec. No actual bomb was detonated during those tests which were designed to see how the weapon's components functioned in cold weather.

In addition, the book details how the Liberal government feared the U.S. would hit Canada with crippling trade sanctions in the 1990s if B.C. followed through with its threat to shut down the Nanoose training range on Vancouver Island. The range was seen as a key facility for the Pentagon's testing of various underwater weapons.

Clearwater, the author of two other books on nuclear weapons in Canada, said the federal government was shaken by the widespread opposition to cruise missile testing.

Although he knew the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service kept close tabs on peace groups during that period, Clearwater said he was surprised by the extent of the government's plans during the Cold War to round up Canadian citizens it saw as subversive.

"It's really about the fear," he said in an interview. "The government feared people who disagreed with it during a time of a national emergency."

Government plans to detain individuals were developed in the late 1940s and updated annually until the early 1980s, Clearwater noted. The first discussion of such a plan appears in 1948 when, on Dec. 15 of that year, the cabinet's defence committee discussed the detainment of 2,500 people.

The BNP's head of publicity, Mark Collett, was cleared of similar charges. He had referred to asylum seekers as "cockroaches", telling the Keighley gathering: "Let's show these ethnics the door in 2004".

Mr Griffin smiled and nodded as the verdict was announced. In the public gallery, his wife burst into tears.

As he left the courtroom, dozens of his supporters outside waved union jack and St George flags, chanting "freedom" and "free speech".

Dozens more gathered to demonstrate against the far-right party, waving banners reading: "Stop fascist BNP".

In an interview with Sky News, Mr Griffin called them "silly, leftwing students".

The BNP leader told his supporters the verdict showed the "huge gulf between ordinary, real people and the multicultural fantasy world of our masters". He praised the "ordinary, decent, common sense" jury for their verdict.

Mr Collett said it was "BNP two, BBC nil". He added: "The BBC ... are a politically correct, politically-biased organisation who has wasted licence-payers' money in a legal action against [us] for speaking nothing more than the truth."

Anti-racist campaigners called the verdict a "travesty of justice", and said it revealed the level of Islamophobia in British society.

The jury returned their verdict after five hours of deliberation, with the charges relating to speeches made at Keighley's Reservoir Tavern in January 2004, which were filmed by an undercover BBC reporter.

Mr Griffin was accused of using words or behaviour intended to stir up racial hatred, and faced two alternative counts of using words or behaviour likely to stir up racial hatred. He denied the charges.

He told the jury his speech was not an attack on Asians in general, but on Muslims.

Mr Collett said the speeches had only been intended to motivate BNP members to take part in "legal and democratic" campaigning.

Detectives from West Yorkshire police launched an investigation into the two men after excerpts from their speeches were screened in the BBC documentary The Secret Policeman.

Speaking after the verdict, a spokesman for the Islamic Human Rights Commission told Sky News: "I am very disappointed. I think this judgement is going to have very grave consequences indeed.

"It gives a very wrong message to the whole of society, both to the victims of his words and to those who are supporters of his racist and Islamophobic views and the promotion of them."

Sabby Dhalu, of Unite Against Fascism, described the verdict as "a travesty of justice".

"We believe that the BNP does incite racial hatred," she said. "In areas where the BNP targets around the country, racist attacks increase. For example, in Barking and Dagenham, where the BNP has 12 councillors, racist attacks have increased by 30% since 2004."

She said Unite Against Fascism would continue to campaign against the far-right party "and alert the decent majority of people in Britain of the dangers of the fascist and racist BNP".

Istat, which published its annual snapshot of the country Thursday, said Italy is one of the eight countries in the 25-member EU in which the population graph bulges at the top.

The others are Germany, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Latvia, Slovenia and Estonia, Istat said.

But Italy, with its low birth rate and relatively long life-expectancy, leaves the rest far behind.

Meanwhile, the overall population is rising. The number of people resident in Italy at the start of 2006 was up by about half a percent to 58.75 million.

Istat noted that this increase was due to immigration and that the number of births was considerably less than the number of deaths. In 2005 the difference was 13,282.

The average Italian woman now has 1.32 children, a lower birth rate than in any of the 15 old EU members except Spain and Greece.