Britain tried to get Bermuda to take some of the 57,000 Ugandan Asians whom former dictator Idi Amin was expelling in the 1970s, newly released secret papers reveal.

But the Island turned down the request from British Prime Minister Ted Heath in 1972, saying the Island had no housing.

Britain asked all its dependent territories and Commonwealth countries, but only Canada and Malawi offered to help out London by taking sizeable numbers of refugees.

Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau said he could take 3,000, and Malawi's President Hastings Banda offered refuge for 1,000 "provided they behave themselves", according to the Cabinet papers released by the Public Records Office in London.

Faced with the prospect of 57,000 Asian Ugandans coming to Britain and placing a strain on the welfare system, Mr. Heath ordered the secret search of the colonies and other remote islands to settle the immigrants.

Mr. Heath even approached the United States and was given a blanket refusal.

The papers also show London was prepared to offer ?2,000 to each of the exiled Asian families if they did not come to Britain.

Australia offered to take a small number of professionally qualified immigrants; the Falkland Islands offered to take a handful of doctors, teachers, domestic servants and farm workers; and British Honduras (now Belize) said it could take 25, provided the British paid their expenses.

The Solomon Islands declined to let the Asians settle on their one good patch of agricultural land; the Virgin and Cayman islands had no jobs; and the Seychelles said there was already substantial prejudice against East African Asians.

Britain tried to get the unpredictable dictator to phase out the expulsions by giving 90 days' notice, but the Foreign Secretary at the time, Sir Alec Douglas-Home noted there was "little prospect of establishing rational communication with him".