Johannesburg - Opposition political parties have joined a chorus of antiwar lobby groups calling for the government to suspend arms exports to the UK and the US until the war in Iraq is over.

The parties accused the government of hypocrisy for denouncing the war on one hand and supplying military equipment to "belligerent states" on the other.

South Africa, through the state-owned arms manufacturing company Denel, exports ammunition to the Royal Ordnance Defence, a unit of BAE Systems in the UK.

Bantu Holomisa, the leader of the United Democratic Movement, said the government should reconsider the contracts it had entered into with any of the countries engaged in any sort of aggression against other states.

"I think the government should review that position (of supplying ammunition to the UK) because we would look like hypocrites - being against the war on one hand and supplying weapons on the other," Holomisa said.

Maxwell Nemadzivhanani, an executive council member of the Pan Africanist Congress, said his party was "very concerned" about South Africa's role in supplying weapons to the UK and the US militaries.

He said South Africa had indirectly become part of the "war axis".

The government should terminate all contracts entered into with "rogue" states during the apartheid era, he said.

The National Conventional Arms Control Committee, which oversees South Africa's arms exports, said it would decide on Thursday whether to suspend or cancel existing contracts with the US and the UK.

But Hendrick Schmidt, the defence spokesperson for the Democratic Alliance, said his party had decided not to take a position on the war against Iraq.

Schmidt said the arms control committee had no powers to cancel contracts but could only withdraw a permission to export.

Kader Asmal, the minister of education who also serves as the chairperson of the committee, said there had been no noticeable increase in the type or quantity of the orders placed on the South African defence-related industries that could be attributed to the increased tension in Iraq.

The US and the UK fall under categories A, B and C of the arms control committee - which implies they qualify to buy sensitive war equipment such as armoured tanks, all-assault rifles, machine guns, pistols and related small arms and ammunition.

The countries also qualify for non-sensitive equipment such as radars.

With acknowledgements to Khulu Phasiwe and Business Report.