PRIME MINISTER Gordon Brown has offered to meet the mother of the soldier Gordon Gentle, who was killed in Iraq after being sent into action without vital equipment.

But Rose Gentle, who has since become a prominent anti-war campaigner, yesterday branded Brown a "coward" for not agreeing to talk with her sooner.

Brown's offer comes after a coroner last week found that her fusilier son might have survived the attack in Basra three years ago, had his vehicle been fitted with a bomb-disabling device.

Gentle said: "Gordon Brown has now sent a letter saying that he will meet with me the next time he's in Glasgow.

"I could go to London tomorrow to meet Gordon Brown but he's too much of a bloody coward. I can't see him doing it."

She added: "The next time he's in Glasgow I might not even be here."

Gentle broke the news in Glasgow yesterday at the opening day of the Solidarity conference - the party led by former socialist MSP Tommy Sheridan - at which she was a guest speaker.

On the day Fusilier Gentle died, the Electronic Counter Measure (ECM) intended for his vehicle was in a Basra storeroom, just 1km away from his unit's base.

Selena Lynch, deputy assistant coroner for Oxfordshire, said on Wednesday that the order to collect the kit was never passed on to his unit.

She said that a system which "appeared chaotic and lacking in clarity" meant that Fusilier Gentle's regiment, the 1st Battalion Royal Highland Fusiliers (RHF), did not pick up the hi-tech kit until after he died.

It was concluded that Fusilier Gentle might have survived the attack on June 28, 2004, had his vehicle been fitted with ECM equipment.

"It's disgusting the way our boys are getting treated," Gentle added. "But if I hadn't fought and dug, and dug, I would have never known about the equipment that Gordon needed."

She even claimed that her campaign had won support from serving soldiers. "There are boys that are in the army, the RHF or whatever, that are actually applauding us for what we are doing, because they still say we've not got what we need'," she said. "We need to keep fighting."

Gentle added that the case for a judicial review into the war will come before the House of Lords in February next year, but regardless of the outcome she will continue to campaign.

She added: "I don't care if it's Tony Blair or Gordon Brown, they're all a bunch of puppets. They haven't got a clue how the families are feeling, what's over there and what's happening. When they go away they have body armour neck to toe, but our boys don't get it."

l Ian Bell: page 34