A British man is shocked to find he's on a list of Bermuda regiment draft dodgers - even though he lives in London, doesn't have Bermuda status and has spend less than two years on the island.

Andrew Lea, 22, was born in Bermuda when his father was working for a bank here but left 18 months later when his family moved back to the UK.

His only other link with Bermuda was a brief spell working at the Biostation four years ago while doing an Oceanography and Marine Biology degree in the UK.

Now working in private equity in London, Mr. Lea fears he will be arrested when he returns to Bermuda for a holiday.

He said friends at the Biostation had jokingly warned him when he left that he might be drafted because the Regiment used the birth list to get names.

When someone told him he had been named in the latest call up list in yesterday's Royal Gazette he thought they were joking.

But when he rang the paper he found to his horror it was true.

He said: "It was a bit of a shock to see I was on this list of draft dodgers. I am going to be on the island in two weeks and I am a bit concerned they will ask why aren't I doing my national service?"

"I have no ties with the island, no citizenship. There is no reason why I should be on that list."

Mr. Lea said he had tried to ring the Regiment to clear the matter up but could only get through to two answer machines - one of which wasn't working properly.

Defence Department Administrator Larry Burchall said only people who did not need to apply for a work permit would ever get drafted even though the offspring of British citizens living on the island would appear on the draft list.

He said some British people living in Bermuda got round this risk by also indicating their offspring were not normally resident in Bermuda.

He said Mr. Lea had since been in touch and would need to write to explain his circumstance so he could be removed from the list.

But he said it was up to people like Mr. Lea to explain their situation or else they would remain on the call up roster.

Commonwealth citizens can serve in Bermuda's part-time army if they volunteer while citizens of countries outside the Commonwealth would have to go through a bureaucratic process if they wanted to join.