Advertisements calling for men to apply as mercenaries appear in morning newspapers today.

Men chosen to go to the Persian Gulf will be paid $400 a week and given a $20,000 life insurance policy.

They will serve a six months' trial in the sheik's private army. Those who do well will be given a three-year contract.

All recruits must be willing to wear uniform, take the military style of discipline, and be able to handle modern small arms.

Their duties: to protect the sheik, his family, his palace and the precious pipelines bringing the oil to the coast from attacks from local insurgents who have already caused death and damage.

I've just had a long talk with the man who is looking for mercenaries in Australia.

He is a Mr. Frank Monte, a 30-year-old former New South Wales policeman turned private eye.
He began by doing divorce work but now he has a suite of offices in stylish Australia Square in the heart of Sydney's financial district.

Monte's advertisements ask prospective mercenaries to telephone him. He plans to weed out the obviously unsuitable and then travel to Melbourne this week to interview the serious applicants personally.

In Sydney he has already listed about 40 men as likely candidates.

"I didn't know we had so many toughies around," he told me.

On condition that I did not reveal the name of the sheikdom, Monte gave me details of a very strange story.

"I've got a big business these days investigating insurance claims and carrying out industrial security," he said. "My clients include some of Australia's largest businesses among which are some of the oil companies.

"It was through an oil company that my name was put forward when the Persian Gulf sheikdom wanted to increase its force of mercenary soldiers. "The sheikdom has a population of only - well let's say it's under half a million - but it is currently producing oil, worth about $6,000 million a year.

"Recently insurgents broke the pipeline and caused the loss of oil worth $21 million.

"The sheik recently hired a couple of big time American private eyes to come out from the States and make the palace safe.

"Those two left pretty suddenly. Somebody wired a bomb into their Mercedes and when one of them turned the engine ignition switch they both blew up with the car."

Monte himself has had a tough life. In the New South Wales police (in which he served both in uniform and in plain clothes) he was badly beat up three times.

He is a thick-set, dark-haired man of Swiss-Italian parentage who has done a great variety of private detective work.