Kilshaw critical after twins decision

The father of the Internet twin girls at the centre of an international custody dispute said today that he is "in a good position to take care of my daughters."

Meanwhile, the British mother who yesterday lost the custody battle said she wanted to leave the country.

A British court ruled that the girls, born in the US and adopted by a British couple through an on-line service, should be returned to Missouri to have a court decide who should raise them.

Aaron Wecker, the girls' biological father, told a US TV show that he wouldn't characterise his estranged wife's competing claim to the children, but added: "I think I make a better parent."

He had consented to the nine-month-old girls' adoption when they were born last year, but said today he had been led to believe they would live in the United States.

The girls were first taken in by a California couple, then given to a British

couple, Judith and Alan Kilshaw of North Wales, who paid a larger fee to the Internet adoption service that both couples had consulted.

Aaron Wecker said he felt he could take better care of the twins because of "the relationship that I'm in, where I live, my job, the ability I have. I'm in a good position to take care of my daughters."

"I feel that will be up to the judge and it's in his hands after we present our cases," he said.

But Judith Kilshaw told a rival US TV show that neither Wecker nor his estranged wife should get the children. "He denied them three times, didn't want anything to do with them," she said.

She said she was thinking of leaving Britain, "I don't want to be here, quite frankly. Would you want to be here if you'd lost all this? And all I did was to do the best I could for the twins."