Deputy President Jacob Zuma's reply to a question in parliament, relating to a meeting with French businessman Alain Thetard, may come back to haunt him this week when he is questioned in the National Assembly about the issue.

The media have already raised the question that Zuma may have lied to parliament in March 2003 when he was questioned about a meeting with Thetard, a director of the French arms company, Thales.

DA MP Raenette Taljaard - who asked the original question - has asked Zuma whether he would reconsider his March 2003 reply and, if not, why not?

She will put her question to Zuma tomorrow, as part of the regular question time in the National Assembly, where members of the executive reply to questions from MPs.

If Zuma is prepared to reconsider, Taljaard wants to know when the meeting with Thetard took place, and what was discussed.

While Zuma may choose not to reply on the basis of the sub judice rule - in the light of the corruption trial of Schabir Shaik - Taljaard believes Zuma owes parliament and South Africa answers.

"I was very concerned with the reply I received in 2003. It was not a categorical denial and I found it worrying that, while he was denying the meetings in the press, there was no categorical denial in parliament," she said yesterday.

Whether Zuma chose to reply went to the heart of the executive's accountability to parliament, she said.

Taljaard also wants to know whether, in the light of the KPMG report submitted at the Shaik trial, Zuma would reconsider his claim to parliament's ethics committee in 2003 that the payments he received via Shaik were interest-bearing loans.

The committee found that the payments were interest-bearing loans and ruled that Zuma was therefore not obliged to disclose them in the register of members' interests.

DA MP Hendrik Schmidt said that his party would wait for the outcome of the Shaik trial, including any findings regarding the credibility of witnesses, before deciding whether to raise the matter before the ethics committee again.

Shaik's lawyer told the Durban High Court last month that Zuma did meet Thetard and Shaik during the weekend of March 10 2000, and not on March 11, as the state contended.

It was after this encounter that Thetard allegedly drew up a handwritten note, which appears to be a draft of an encrypted fax that he sent to his superiors, which allegedly contained information relating to a R500 000-a-year bribe.

In her question to Zuma last year, Taljaard asked whether he had had any "meetings on March 11 2000 and/or on any other specified dates with Mr Alain Thetard, former head of Thompson CSF's (now Thales), Southern Africa division, and/or Mr Schabir Shaik in Durban or elsewhere?".

Zuma replied: "I did not meet Alain Thetard on March 11 2000 in Durban or anywhere else in South Africa."

Zuma also said that he was not in a position to remember everyone he had met.

With acknowledgements to Angela Quintal and The Mercury.