Former top UN weapons inspector turned peace activist Scott Ritter will be at US airbase Menwith Hill on July 4 - backing protesters' calls for independence from America.

Ritter, who was a weapons inspector in Iraq until 1998, is flying in from the US to speak to campaigners outside the base's gates near Otley on America's Independence Day.

He was invited by veteran peace campaigner Lindis Percy, 63, who is the joint co-ordinator of the Otley-based peace group CAAB, the Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases.

The group has held a weekly protest outside the base for nearly five years, and a protest has been held at its gates on every Independence Day since the 1980s.

Mrs Percy, who recently became the first peace campaigner to have a tagging order made against her for anti-social behaviour linked to Menwith Hill protests, said she invited Ritter, also an ex-marine intelligence officer, because of his links with speaking out against the war with Iraq.

He has claimed President Bush had no proof of any new weapons of mass destruction emanating from Iraq.

And he openly declared Bush was lying to the American people to get them to go to war.

Mrs Percy said she hoped for a big turn-out on July 4 to give their support.

"It's Independence Day and we are calling for independence from America.

"While our group will be too busy to go to any of the G8 protests in Edinburgh and Sheffield we will be getting ready here for the July 4 protest.

"We'd like those who are going to Edinburgh to come back via Menwith Hill.

"The airbase plays a significant part in the poverty issue. America spends billions and billions of pounds on defence and weapons when there are people starving. It's totally unacceptable. We have got to make the connection between this and poverty."

As well as Ritter speaking, agit-pop band Chumbawumba will also be playing.

The protest meeting starts at around noon and will go on until 5pm.

Meanwhile, Mrs Percy, who now lives in Hull but works as a part-time health visitor for Bradford City Primary Care Trust, is still waiting to find out if an appeal she launched will overturn the tagging decision.

The decision was made by a district judge sitting at Harrogate Magistrates' Court after he rejected an application for an anti-social behaviour order by the Ministry of Defence Police Agency and North Yorkshire Police.

Mrs Percy, who cannot be tagged until an appeal decision is made, said: "I'm still a free woman and I'll be there on July 4."