The four Cabinet ministers most closely involved in the controversial R43 billion arms deal come face to face with Parliament's watchdog public accounts committee (Scopa) today. The ministers of finance, trade, defence and public enterprises have been highly critical of a Scopa interim report which called for a multi-agency probe into the deal. 

They told a media conference in January that the committee was incompetent and irresponsible and did not understand how arms deals work. Gavin Woods, the committee chairperson, is on record as saying that the ministers were "on thin ice" when they said that everything was above board in the arms deal. 

However, since party bosses appointed a new-look African National Congress component to the committee, it is unlikely that the ministers will be grilled or challenged by their own party colleagues, observers said. 

Woods said last week that today's meeting in Parliament would be a critique of the ministers' January press statement and that broader issues relating to the arms deal would also be discussed. 

MPs on the committee spent two days privately scrutinising top secret information about the deal last week. 

With acknowledgement to Sapa and SABC News.