GEORGE GALLOWAY, the controversial leader of the Respect party, is facing a damaging divorce action on the eve of the election.

His Palestinian-born wife questions how he can call the party Respect when she claims he has been disrespectful to her by having a series of friendships with other women.

Amineh Abu-Zayyad has told The Sunday Times she can no longer tolerate his behaviour and will be contacting solicitors this week.

She says she has received a number of phone calls from women who claim to have had romantic links with him. She adds that Galloway has tried to smooth things over by telling her it is a plot by an unnamed intelligence service to discredit him.

The threatened divorce action will be a blow to Galloway, who is standing for election in Bethnal Green and Bow, east London. He is trying to attract the substantial Muslim vote in the constituency to displace the sitting Labour MP, Oona King.

Divorce still has a social stigma in the Muslim world where a man can technically divorce his wife by saying he is divorcing her three times. But it is still unusual for a Muslim woman to divorce her husband.

Speaking from their home in Streatham, south London, Galloway’s wife, a Muslim, said: “I should tell you that when he told me his new party was going to be called Respect, I went upstairs and cried. How can he call it this when he doesn’t even treat his own wife with respect?”

Zayyad, a 39-year-old scientist, married Galloway five years ago. They had met at a political meeting in Glasgow in 1991. “He was my hero,” she says. “He did such a lot for the Palestinians.”

Zayyad said she became increasingly suspicious of her husband: “I had started hearing rumours about one woman from several sources so I called her and told her the rumours were hurting me. She told me she would hang up and call me back.

“When she called me back she said George had told her he was divorcing me in order to marry her. She was 22 and told me that she would never marry a man who was her father’s age.”

She claims she also received a number of phone calls from people telling her she should be concerned.

One incident allegedly occurred in February this year when Zayyad was in Jordan and she claims to have received a call at her mother’s house from a woman who knew Galloway in London.

Zayyad said: “She was very stressed, crying. She said she wanted to apologise for all the pain she had caused over the previous two years . . . She asked me to forgive her. I was so upset, almost broken. I collapsed to the floor.

“An hour later George called and asked me what ‘this crazy woman’ had said to me. George told me that she had asked him to marry her, but that he had refused and this was her revenge.”

She said he later suggested she should go to Beirut and not return to Britain until after the election. “George said it was the intelligence services, his enemies, that were trying to get at me.”

Galloway, who was expelled from the Labour party in 2003 for his remarks during the Iraq war, has the sobriquet “Gorgeous George” because of his sharp suits and reputation as a ladies’ man.

Asked once about his relationships with delegates at a conference in Greece in 1985, he said on TV: “I spent lots of time with people in Greece, many of whom were women, some of whom were known carnally to me.”

He and his first wife, Elaine, with whom he has a daughter, divorced in 1989.

Galloway said yesterday: “My marriage has been experiencing difficulties for quite some time. For much of the last two years my wife has been living abroad. I had hoped for a reconciliation but clearly my wife has decided otherwise. There is no other party involved. This is a private matter.

“It has clearly been raised by The Sunday Times to damage me in the election on Thursday and is a measure of the desperation in ‘new Labour’ circles at the danger of them losing the Bethnal Green and Bow constituency.”

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