Firebrand British lawmaker George Galloway sparked further controversy yesterday, saying that insurgents fighting British and US troops in Iraq were making a "heroic decision".

The Scottish deputy, a fierce critic of the 2003 Iraq war who made headlines in May by facing down US senators who accused him of receiving oil kickbacks from Iraq, said not all were heroic, but some were.

"I think the decision the Iraqis have made to resist foreign occupation is a heroic decision," he told Scotland's Sunday Herald newspaper. "The individual acts carried out by people in the name of resistance may or may not be heroic. Some are undoubtedly heroic.

"The storming of a military barracks of a more powerful adversary in a classic guerrilla warfare operation is undoubtedly heroic. The bombing of children taking sweeties from an American soldier is clearly

not heroic."

Critics accused the 50-year-old of endangering British troops last week after he went on television in the Middle East to hail the Iraqi "resistance" for "defending all the people of the world against American hegemony".

Galloway was expelled in 2003 from Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labour Party, which he had represented in parliament since 1987. He subsequently set up his own party, Respect, on whose ticket he was elected in May ballots.

The maverick lawmaker also defended remarks he made in parliament on July 7, the day of the deadly terror bombs in London that killed 56 people and left 700 injured.

Galloway told lawmakers on July 7 that Londoners had paid the price for Britain sending soldiers into Iraq and Afghanistan.

"I didn't have any choice," he told the Sunday Herald. "I knew that nobody else would say it, so I had to say it."