George Galloway, the Respect MP, attacked a US Senate committee today for its "schoolboy errors" over claims that Saddam Hussein awarded him lucrative contracts under the UN Oil-for-Food programme.

In a defiant performance on Capitol Hill, the new MP for Bethnal Green and Bow accused the committee of traducing his own reputation and mounting "the mother of all smokescreens" to hide the real scandal - that Americans had plundered billions of dollars of Iraqi wealth.

The subcommittee, chaired by Norm Coleman, the Minnesota Republican, had alleged that Mr Galloway used a charity he established in 1998 to channel funds from allocations of 20 million barrels from 2000 to 2003.

"I am not now nor have I ever been an oil trader and neither has anyone on my behalf," Mr Galloway said.

"I was an opponent of Saddam Hussein when British and American governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas."

Mr Galloway, who appeared in front of the committee voluntarily and testified under oath, used his opening statement to attack the allegations made against him in a dossier that he said was full of errors.

"On the very first page of your document about me, you assert that I have had many meetings with Saddam Hussein. This is false," Mr Galloway said.

"I have had two meetings with Saddam Hussein, once in 1994 and once in August 2002. By no stretch of the English language can that be described as many meetings. In fact I've met him exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is that Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns."

He selected Mr Coleman as the focus of his wrath, adding: "You have nothing on me, Senator, except my name on lists of names from Iraq, many of which have been drawn up after the installation of your puppet government in Iraq.

"Now I know that standards have slipped over the last few years in Washington, but for a lawyer, you are remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice."

The day-long hearing was reviewing three major reports from the subcommittee of the US Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, which studied in great detail how Saddam made billions in illegal oil sales despite UN sanctions imposed in 1991 after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.

Mr Coleman alleged that Mr Galloway and others who received oil allocations, including prominent Russian politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky, then paid kickbacks to Saddam as part of the deal. He claimed that Saddam received more than US $300,000 ($237,416) in surcharges on allocations involving Mr Galloway.

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