The draft law on arms sales, the national Conventional Arms Control Bill, has been subject to intense debate and behind-the-scenes jostling in the past few weeks.

The bill is finally expected to be passed into law by the end of the week.

Senior ANC members have been at loggerheads over who we should be selling weapons to, which criteria should govern sales, who should know about them, and the role of parliament's oversight responsibilities in international arms sales.

ANC MP Thandi Modise, chairperson of parliament's defence committee, has for the past two years led the ANC charge valiantly for a more moral policy on arms sales, strongly asserting parliament's oversight role.

In sharp contrast to its previously clandestine defence market during the apartheid era and the cold war, democratic South Africa suddenly emerged on the world's defence and aerospace market as a legitimate arms manufacturer and dealer.

But the need for a well-regulated industry soon dawned when a scandal broke in 1995 over a consignment of arms that was supposedly sold to Lebanon but instead found its way to Yemen - at the time embroiled in an intense civil war.

Keen to shed South Africa's pariah status in the global arena, the national Conventional Arms Control Committee was hurriedly established to oversee all arms exports.

But the fledgling government soon learnt a crucial lesson in this new arena.

Transparency and accountability were buzzwords in the new South Africa but most prospective clients of the country/s burgeoning arms industry wanted exactly the opposite - absolute secrecy.

By September 2000 the government submitted a controversial new draft law to parliament, provoking accusations from human rights activists that when it came to arms sales, the new government sought to act like the old. Now, almost two years later, parliament's defence committee will this week finalise the bill before sending it to the National Assembly for ratification.

At issue in the bill are two controversial and unresolved matters relating to transparency and parliamentary oversight of arms sales.

All parties in the national assembly's defence committee, unusually, had spoken with one voice when it came to oversight and transparency on arms sales, until the ANC government instructed the committee to accede to the executive's demands.

The executive did not want parliament to have "prospective oversight" - the power to approve or veto pending arms exports.

The issue was thrown into stark relief when Modise and Mosiuoa Lekota, the defence minister, had a battle royal in the defence committee recently.

Lekota said that it was not the function of the legislature to pre-approve arms sales.

He also argued that South Africa needed a healthy export-oriented defence industry for its own security and to create jobs.

Lekota pointed out that very often a nation that wanted to purchase South African arms would acknowledge the country's internal rules and would not mind the value of weapons being made public - but would not want the type and quantities revealed.

On other occasions a nation might not want its neighbours to know about the purchase because of hostility between them, Lekota said. He pointed out that these were legitimate concerns since it was an internationally recognised right for a state to protect itself against a hostile neighbour.

The committee's insistence on pre-emptive oversight was tantamount to usurping the role of the executive, Lekota said.

What if, Lekota asked, something went wrong with an arms sale recommended by the committee? Security and secrecy considerations in arms sales were a reality and had to be respected, he argued.

Modise's pithy response was: "Can we recall arms once they have left our border? Tell me minister."

Modise lamented the fact that while South Africa had some of the most advanced transparency provisions on arms sales, the practice was quite different. She has been fighting to receive the report on arms sales from the arms control committee for the past two years.

Modise has been pushing for pre-emptive oversight and greater transparency so that parliament could have more clout about weapon sales to countries with bad human rights records. Now, it seemed, the ANC position was that there would be no pre-emptive oversight.

Laurie Nathan of the University of Cape Town's Centre for Conflict Resolution and adviser to the defence committee, as well as Felicity Harrison, co-ordinator for Amnesty International in South Africa, said the bill contained important oversight provisions but could go further.

Nathan said the bottom line was that the current version of the bill did not provide for disclosure of information to the United Nations, parliament and the public.

However, the debate was about just how much information should be disclosed. It might "be possible to reach some consensus or compromise through better drafting", Nathan said.

While Lekota argued that arms purchasers wanted some degree of confidentiality and secrecy for strategic and military reasons, transparency was a fundamental principle of South Africa's constitution, Nathan said.

In terms of unanimous resolutions passed by the UN general assembly, transparency in the arms trade was required in order to enhance confidence, stability and security, and countries like Britain and the United States publicised most of their arms transactions, he added.

However, said Nathan, the current bill was a "vast improvement" on the first draft submitted by the executive to the parliamentary committee in September 2000.

Nathan said in many respects the current version, unlike the previous, covered small arms, included a code of conduct on countries that violated human rights or undermined regional security, and provided for an independent inspectorate.

Taking a more extreme view on arms sales and disclosures was anti-arms crusader Terry Crawford-Browne.

He pointed out that human rights organisations had repeatedly complained about South Africa supplying conflict situations in Africa.

But Kader Asmal, the arms control committee chairperson, said each weapon sale was carefully considered by about eight or nine ministers before being passed to the committee. South Africa, he said, had ceased weapons sales to Israel and had even worked to stop third-party sales to Israel.

With acknowledgements to Andre Koopman, Jeremy Michaels and Sunday Independent.