Budapest (dpa) - Denying or playing down the Holocaust in Hungary is to be a criminal offence punishable by up to three years imprisonment after President Laszlo Solyom signed new legislation into law on Wednesday.

A spokesman said the president did not consider the legislation to be in contravention of the constitutional right to freedom of speech.

The legislation, initiated by the governing Hungarian Socialist Party, was passed by Hungary's parliament on February 22 in the last scheduled legislative session before general elections in April.

The centre-right opposition party Fidesz abstained from the vote after the Socialists rejected a motion to extend the scope of the law to also cover crimes committed in the name of Communism from 1948 to 1989.

Some 450,000 Hungarian Jews are thought to have perished during the closing months of the World War II at the hands of the Hungarian fascist Arrow Cross Party, backed by Nazi Germany.