A US Senate subcommittee investigating the UN oil-for-food programme scandal has accused British parliamentarian George Galloway of lying in testimony to the committee that he never benefited from allocations of Iraqi crude oil under the programme.

In a report on evidence it says it obtained since Galloway testified in May, the subcommittee said on Monday Galloway personally solicited and received eight oil vouchers from the Saddam Hussein regime between 1999 and 2003.

It also said that Galloway's wife, and a political campaign run by Galloway, both received money generated by the oil allocations; and that Saddam's regime took $1.6 million in kickbacks in connection with the Galloway vouchers.

In denying such benefits in his May testimony, the report said, "Galloway knowingly made false or misleading statements under oath before the subcommittee."

In Britain, Galloway strongly rejected the charges through his spokesman Roy McKay, and called the Senate report a "conviction without trial."

Coleman's group has focused its attention on individuals it believes took illegal benefits from the programme, which was aimed at allowing sanction-hit Iraq to sell a limited amount of oil to buy food and medicine for its population.

Besides Galloway, Coleman's committee has fingered senior officials at the United Nations, and top Russian and French politicians, of taking money or oil allocations from the programme.

Two former high-ranking French diplomats - including the representative to the United Nations between 1991 and 1995 - have been placed under criminal investigation by a French judge looking into the matter.

In its newest report, the Coleman committee added new evidence for its earlier accusations that Galloway, an outspoken opponent of US policy in Iraq, worked with Jordanian businessman Fawaz Zuraiqat to obtain money from an oil-for-food programme oil allocation.

Citing bank documents, records from the former Saddam regime, testimony from Saddam's former deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz, and information from two unidentified oil traders, the report said that Galloway's Mariam Appeal political campaign reaped at least $446,000 from oil allocations.

It said his now-estranged wife Amina Abu-Zayyad got about $150,000.

According to Aziz, Galloway visited Baghdad in November 1999 on a tour raising money for the Mariam Appeal.

It also said that the main conduit for trading the oil allocations was Zuraiqat, a personal friend of Galloway, who eventually paid Saddam's officials $1.6 million under the table for the vouchers.

Noting that they had not yet seen the Senate report, Galloway's spokesman reiterated his denial of the original charges and the newest one of having given deliberately false or misleading testimony to the subcommittee.

Galloway "has challenged Coleman and the committee to charge him with perjury. He will get on the plane to the US as soon as they do that," McKay said.

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