Seven international airlines have been accused of operating a freight price-fixing cartel in a class-action lawsuit in Australia demanding 200 million dollars (155 million US), lawyers have said.

Australia's flag carrier Qantas Airways, British Airways plc, Germany's Lufthansa, Singapore Airlines, Hong Kong's Cathay Pacific, Air New Zealand and Japan Air Lines (JAL) were named in the suit filed in Melbourne last month.

The suit was filed on behalf of Australian victims of the alleged freight cartel, which has also been the focus of other lawsuits in the United States and Canada.

Papers were served on Qantas on Thursday, lawyers said.

The lawsuit alleges the carriers have been fixing cargo prices through the imposition of various surcharges on customers since 2000 in what lawyers for the claimants say was a flagrant case of anti-competitive abuse.

"Air freight surcharges have been unlawfully inflated over the last seven years," said lawyer Kim Parker of the firm Maurice Blackburn Cashman, which is representing the alleged victims.

"This case will bring those contraventions into the spotlight and will enable the victims of this cartel to claim back significant losses over the period," she said.

The alleged victims, who shipped goods on the carriers named in the suit, claim that the airlines made a secret agreement to use the surcharges to lift industry prices.

They included fuel surcharges attributed to higher fuel costs, security charges because of extra measures after the September 11 attacks on US targets and war-risk surcharges blamed on higher insurance costs linked to the Iraq war.

Businesses and people who have paid for more than 20,000 dollars worth of air freight services over the last seven years were affected by the alleged cartel, Parker said.

Lawyers for the Australian victims said they had served papers on Qantas, and an airline spokesman said the company would review the claim and respond once it had examined the papers.

US, European Union and Asian officials announced 11 months ago that they were investigating possible price fixing by the air cargo industry and raided several airline offices around the world.

Prosecutions and class actions have already been launched in the United States and Canada over the same alleged cartel.

In the US case an 85-million-dollar settlement was reached with Lufthansa, while the remaining claim against the other airlines stands at around one billion dollars.