Cape Town - Auditor-general Shauket Fakie is to submit a special report to Parliament within 10 days dealing with allegations of impropriety in his handling of the investigation into the arms deal.

Allegations have been made based on the release of draft reports of the joint investigating team submitted by Fakie to cabinet that material alterations had been made to the report to hide irregularities.

Fakie has denied this and has denied that Parliament was misled when it examined the final report.

Fakie phoned Parliament's public accounts committee chairman Francois Beukman and Speaker of the National Assembly Frene Ginwala and told them that he wanted to submit a special report "to clear the air", Beukman said. It is likely Fakie will appear in person to explain his special report.

However, as Parliament breaks for recess at the end of next week, a discussion of Fakie's report is only likely to occur in the third quarter, which commences late next month or early in August.

Beukman said the committee would decide on how to proceed once it had evaluated Fakie's report.

The submission of the report to the public accounts committee would allow the body to investigate the allegations without doing so on the "prompting of newspaper reports" a concern expressed by African National Congress (ANC) committee members yesterday.

The debate on the way forward became heated as the ANC and Democratic Alliance (DA) differed on how to respond to reports on the alleged irregularities.

DA MP Nigel Bruce said the allegations stemmed from a comparison of the draft and final reports, and not simply on reports by Business Day.

The draft reports were made available following a court application made by failed arms contract bidder Richard Young, MD of C²I².

Bruce said these were matters of fact the committee was obliged to investigate if it was to fulfil its supervisory role.

ANC MP Bruce Kannemeyer urged that judgment be suspended until all the facts had been placed before the committee.

With acknowledgements to Linda Ensor and the Business Day.