HE CLAIMS to have seen spaceships soaring across the city's skies and crop circles 300ft-wide so it will take more than an official report to convince this Oxford UFO expert aliens don't exist.

A confidential four-year study by the Ministry of Defence, made public following a request under the Freedom of Information Act, concluded there is no proof of alien life forms.

But Michael Soper, pictured, a member of the Contact International UFO research group, has spent decades of his life studying unidentified flying objects and believed the MoD's report did not throw any doubt on his findings.

Mr Soper, of Ouseley Closecorr, New Marston, who first saw a UFO in 1959 over the Malvern Hills in Worcestershire, said: "Obviously, the MoD can't admit aliens exist.

"Even if they knew they did, they could not admit to it. This is the only kind of report they could produce. I don't agree with most of it."

The report, undertaken by the Defence Intelligence Staff, part of the MoD, concludes that sightings of UFOs can be rationally explained and that meteors and their "well-known effects" are responsible for "some unidentified aerial phenomena".

But Mr Soper disagreed and said this could only explain about five per cent of the cases he had encountered.

He said: "You would need to have a strange mentality to believe the conclusions of this report. I have read thousands of witness reports and seen all kinds of evidence and the MoD's conclusions do not come anywhere near to explaining them."

Mr Soper, a researcher and mathmetician, said he has pictures of an object he believes to be an alien spacecraft which he spotted on a photo taken of a cloud near Banbury.

In 1995, he took a picture of a spherical object above the Co-op store in Marston and has also investigated crop circles in fields near Garsington.

He said: "I've heard petrol engines just cut out when a UFO has flown overhead.

"I've seen pennies burnt after UFOs have landed on them. There are reports of multiple witness sightings.

"The MoD's report shows there is a case to answer if they feel the need to produce a 400-page report. We were told there was no study being undertaken, but in actual fact a four-year study was being carried out.

"It is a bittersweet victory for us. They have admitted there is something to explain."

The report, entitled Unidentified Aerial Phenomena in the UK, was completed in 2000 and stamped "Secret: UK Eyes Only".

Only a small number of copies were produced and the identity of the man who wrote it has been protected.