A class action lawsuit seeking unspecified damages for the victims of a Tulsa, Oklahoma race riot could pave the way to a slavery reparations lawsuit brought in an international forum, a leading US lawyer Johnnie Cochran has said.

"Reparations is a really big thing," he said. "This one case could lead to the other. The other one is going to be tougher."

The Tulsa lawsuit, which entered preliminary hearings yesterday, seeks unspecified damages for more than100 victims of a 1921 race riot initially provoked by a local newspaper's editorialising of a story about a black man accused of raping a white woman. The accusation turned out to be false.

The paper encouraged its readers to lynch the man and when a white mob showed up at the jailhouse, they were deputised by city officials and handed weapons. About 10,000 whites, including the National Guard and members of the Klu Klux Klan, then rampaged the community of Greenwood, at the time considered the most affluent black community in the United States, in an orgy of looting and burning.

When the dust cleared as many as 300 people were dead but their bodies are believed to have been secretly buried in mass graves and have not been recovered. A Commission appointed in 1991 by the Oklahoma state legislature confirmed in its final report that the violence had been encouraged by public officials but the state has yet to make restitution to the survivors.

Mr. Cochran, who is currently vacationing on the Island, has formed the Reparations Coordinating Committee along with Harvard Law Professor Charles Ogletree and others to formulate and implement a strategy to force the US Government to pay reparations for slavery.

Success in the Tulsa case would mark a major milestone in that effort, Mr. Cochran agreed.

While time is fast running out - the victims are between the ages of 81 and over 102 - Mr. Cochran says there's a "really good chance" that the lawsuit will prevail.

He cited the state commission's own findings and the fact that there are living witnesses and survivors willing to testify.

"It's really important because for all those people who have said 'wait a minute all the slaves are dead' and 'I never owned any slaves, why are you bringing this up'. You know 'let bygones be bygones.' We are saying that we are reinitiating a conversation that began about 150 years ago in which promises were made and basically not kept, not fulfilled. It's the most amazing thing in the world - our clients are all alive (descendants of Tulsa race riots) including historian John Hope Franklin. If you hear the stories of these remarkable people, these people have survived almost everything."

He doubted that the issue of slavery reparations could be resolved politically under the current US administration and said that a legal recourse was the best option.

A primary problem is that the United States had never really faced up to its past, he said. "Why can't we address it? I always say there are 51 states and one is the state of denial."

Already the Reparations Committee have met with lawyers in South Africa and the Caribbean, he revealed.

Asked whether a reparations action could be brought in an international forum, giving that slavery was a crime against humanity, he said : "That would be prudent. I think we would have to start here but I think we have to go abroad also. I think ultimately we will (get an international forum). The Tulsa victory will mean a lot. I'm optimistic. We'll start at one point and work our way."

He indicated that the remedy being sought would fall more along the lines of restructuring America to address economic and educational gaps between the races.

"I don't think we are all going to get 40 acres and a new SUV out of this," he said. "What's it worth for a nation to have 200 years of free labour ?"

Mr. Cochran, who gained widespread exposure for his role in the OJ Simpson murder trial, scotched rumours in the US media that his retirement was imminent.

He said he had sparked the rumours by saying that he would retire with the news of former black panther Geronimo Pratt's release.

"There was a lot of speculation. I think that I had said that I would never retire until Geronimo Pratt was released. After a 27 year battle he was freed on June 10 1997, and there was speculation then that now would be a good time," he said. "But then I looked around at some of the battles left to fight."

He is now increasingly focused on what he calls "larger issues of justice". And practically everyone of them concerns racial justice.

Mr. Cochran and the other members of the legal team are working on the Tulsa case for free.

"This isn't about money for us. This is about justice. The reason I'm not retiring is I'm trying to get some justice."