Britain's defence ministry said however it knew of only "a handful of deserters since 1989".

During 2005 alone, 377 people deserted and are still missing, the British Broadcasting Corporation said on its website, adding that so far this year another 189 are on the run.

Without explaining how it arrived at the figures, it said some 900 deserters have evaded capture since the Iraq war started in March 2003.

Lawmaker John McDonnell told parliament on Monday that the "number of abscondees has trebled since the invasion of Iraq" as he registerd opposition to a government bill to sentence deserters to a maximum of life in prison.

McDonnell, who is among a leftwing group within the governing Labour party, said Sunday that the ministry of defence's denial "flies in the face of all the other evidence and the experience of soldiers on the ground.

"My understanding is there are a lot more seeking to avoid service, through different mechanisms," he said.

The BBC cited lawyers who represent troops at courts martial as saying that growing numbers of soldiers are seeking advice from them about avoiding service in Iraq, even if they want to stop short of deserting.

Justin Hugheston-Roberts, who represented Flight Lieutenant Malcolm Kendall-Smith, jailed for eight months for refusing to follow orders over a deployment to Iraq, said: "There has been an increase, a definite upturn."

Ben Griffin, a member of the elite Special Air Service (SAS), told his commanding officer this year that he was not prepared to return to Iraq because he said he saw US forces carrying out what he thought were illegal acts.

Griffin, who was allowed to leave the military, told the BBC that he believed many other British troops shared his views, though he would advise them to speak out rather than actually desert if they think the war is wrong.

"I can't speak for others, but there's a lot of dissent in the army about the legality of war and concerns that they're spending too much time there," he told the BBC.

In response to the BBC report of at least 1,000 deserters, a defence ministry spokeswoman told AFP: "It's not true.

"I think they are talking about the number in the army who remain absent without leave (AWOL). There have been a handful of deserters since 1989," she said.

"But basically there's no significant rise in the number of soldiers going absent without leave each year," she added.

The ministry recorded 2,670 AWOL cases in 2001, 2,970 in 2002, 2,825 in 2003, 3,050 in 2004, 2,725 in 2005, and 426 through April of 2006.

In contrast with desertion, which means that "somebody doesn't want to serve on the frontline or whatever," AWOL means that a soldier is ill or has not reported for duty, usually because of "domestic circumstances," she said.

"Most of those will then return most of the time after a couple of days, perhaps," she said.

Nor does any evidence suggest that Iraq was causing them to go AWOL, said the spokewsoman, though she did not have a breakdown of reasons for why they went AWOL.

Some 111 British troops have died in Iraq. Some 7,200 British servicemen and women are currently deployed in southern Iraq and neighboring Kuwait, where members of the Royal Air Force and other personnel are based.