National Assembly Standing Committee on Public Accounts chairperson, Dr Gavin Woods, has quit - citing concerns that the key watchdog of public finance is not doing its job.

His action, he hopes, will end months of bitter infighting in the committee.

Woods said differences in the committee - and in particular with the ruling African National Congress majority - over how to handle the controversial arms deal investigation was a key reason for his resignation.

Announcing his resignation today, the Inkatha Freedom Party MP said he hoped his decision would create "a new fluidity" which would reaffirm the vital role of the committee, also known by its acronym SCOPA, as a non-partisan body and clarify the nature and purpose of having an opposition chairperson.

It is traditional in Commonwealth democratic parliaments that the chairperson of public accounts is drawn from the opposition.

It is widely expected that Woods will be replaced by the New National Party's Pierre Uys, a former Western Cape MEC.

Woods, 53, who was elected SCOPA chairperson in July 1999, said events in the third quarter of 2000 began to test the committee's "important non-partisan approach to its work".

He said divisions in the committee grew in early 2001 when the ANC leadership expressed disapproval of SCOPA's 14th arms deal report - including the need to include Judge Willem Heath in the probe.

Woods said: "The politics intensified and became driven by perceived political enemies and conspiracy theories".

This led to the side-lining of ANC study group chairperson Andrew Feinstein - who resigned from Parliament last year - and "the ostracising of myself ... and (Democratic Alliance MP) Raenette Taljaard".

Woods said the committee - which devoted hours and hours during its meetings last year on process matters and disagreements over agendas - lost its focus "and with that a dramatic loss of productivity and of work standard".