The demonstrators, including several former soldiers clad in Scotland's traditional kilt, shouted "no amalgamations! No cuts! No surrender", to demand the survival of their 400-year-old regiment.

Britain's Defence Minister Geoff Hoon announced on Thursday the move to scrap the Black Watch -- whose official name is the Royal Highland Regiment -- as a separate entity.

The changes form part of a wide-ranging army shake-up which will see other famous units, such as the English-based Queen's Lancashire Regiment, which also served in Iraq, amalgamated.

Hoon announced that six Scottish regiments, including the Black Watch -- in existence since 1715, would be merged to form a new "super regiment" called the Royal Regiment of Scotland.

The head of the Scottish National Party (SNP) Alex Salmond told Sky News on Saturday the move was "a stab in the back...you can restructure the army without destroying regiments."

Five of the Black Watch regiment were killed during the final month in Iraq, after Britain consented to a US request for the regiment to move temporarily from the southern city of Basra to the region around Baghdad nicknamed "the triangle of death".

The Black Watch was formed during unrest following the first Jacobite rebellion in 1715, an unsuccessful attempt to restore the Stuart dynasty to the English and Scottish throne, and has been deployed in virtually every other conflict involving Britain ever since.

It fought in the Napoleonic wars, in Crimea, the west and south of Africa and the northwest frontier of India during the days of the British empire, and during World Wars I and II.

The name Black Watch comes from the combination of its original role -- to "watch" the Highlands of Scotland -- and the very dark tartan of its uniform.

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