Parliament's watchdog, the public accounts committee, will receive a special report from auditor-general Shauket Fakie on claims that the final arms deal report was edited before deciding on how to proceed with an investigation into the matter.

Francois Beukman, chair of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa), said Fakie would table the report in parliament within the next 10 days.

"We will get the special report and evaluate it and then determine how to proceed," he said.

Scopa members would also examine the final report and the draft reports on the arms deal investigations to determine whether the final report had been edited and whether parliament had been "misled", said Beukman.

Scopa should not start its inquiry by assuming it had been misled but it "must start its inquiry to find out if it had been misled", he said.

It has been alleged that draft reports of the Joint Investigative Team which consisted of the AG, the Public Protector and the national directorate of public prosecutions had been heavily "doctored" before the final report was submitted to parliament in November 2001.

Fakie has strongly rejected any implications of a cover-up saying there were good reasons for omitting some items in the final report.

The AG said reports on defence and security matters could be limited in terms of the Auditor-General Act after consultations with the responsible minister, the president and minister of finance.

The report was limited in terms of legislation governing national interest, he said.

But the Democratic Alliance has rejected Fakie's reliance on what it terms "unconstitutional" apartheid-era legislation.

Nigel Bruce of the Democratic Party also rejected statements by African National Congress members that an investigation of the report had been called for purely on the basis of newspaper reports.

It was "fact", not speculation, that the draft reports obtained by Richard Young, one of the losing bidders in the arms deal, appeared to differ from the final report. It was the duty of the committee to look at both reports to see if there had been editing, said Bruce.

With acknowledgements to Andre Koopman and The Mercury.