THE long-awaited arms deal report was at the government printers in Cape Town yesterday, ahead of its tabling in Parliament this week.

It will be up to National Assembly speaker Frene Ginwala to decide when to make the report public, although Parliament rises on Friday for the year. Auditor-General Shauket Fakie said he was flying to Cape Town yesterday afternoon, but was unable to say when he would submit the report to Ginwala.

"I don't know how far the printers are," he said. The report is more than 250-pages long.

Gavin Woods, chairman of Parliament's standing committee on public accounts, said the printing was just about complete.

"It seems very little will stop it from being tabled by tomorrow." Woods said there was still a degree of uncertainty about when his committee would sit to deal with the report. Although an agenda had been agreed to in principle at a committee meeting last week, some concerns about the dates had been raised at yesterday's meeting.

The committee was likely to meet for an hour tomorrow or Friday for initial talks on the report, and would meet again on November 21 to confirm the dates for the public hearings on the report.

Woods said that these would hopefully still occur on December 5 and 6. The investigating agencies and relevant government departments had been asked to be on stand-by.

The National Assembly's trade and industry, finance, defence and ethics committees are also expected to look into the report. Fakie is leading the forensic side of the probe into the controversial deal. Public Protector Selby Baqwa and the national directorate of public prosecutions are also investigating.

Meanwhile, a member of the board of a company involved in the government's multibillion-rand arms deal, Ian Pierce, will not stand trial for allegedly ignoring a summons to testify before the public inquiry into the deal and provide it with documents.

He appeared briefly in the Pretoria Regional Court yesterday, but the case docket was not at court. When magistrate JC Kruger refused to postpone the matter, the state prosecutor withdrew the charges.

The Scorpions arrested Pierce, of Futuristic Business Solutions, in Sandton in September for the alleged contravention of Section 48 of the National Prosecuting Authority Act. He was released on his own recognisance.

With acknowledgement to Angela Quintal, Sapa and Business Day.