Cape Town - The former chairman of Parliament's Standing Committee on Public Accounts (Scopa) Gavin Woods is to call on the committee to investigate the irregularities in the report to Parliament on the arms deal which have come to light in recent weeks.

Woods - who resigned as chair of Scopa in 2002 over the committee's handling of the arms deal saga, but then rejoined the committee after last year's elections - said on Thursday that if no action is taken in Parliament to deal with the matter, he will call on Scopa to investigate.

Earlier this week the Democratic Alliance delivered a letter to President Thabo Mbeki calling for a judicial commission to probe the irregularities in the report.

The call, supported by United Democratic Movement leader Bantu Holomisa, follows the release of confidential documents accessed by Cape Town defence contractor Richard Young, in which new evidence of serious irregularities in the arms deal has emerged.

In an interview with the Witness, Woods stood behind Independent Democrats leader Patricia de Lille who is against a judicial commission, saying that Parliament should deal with the matter.

"I would hope we do not go the judicial commission of inquiry route. Even though there are dirty hands in Parliament, it would be proper from a constitutional perspective for the issue to be taken up by Parliament. It must all come back to the mechanisms of Parliament," Woods said.

Meanwhile, the anti-arms lobby group, Economists Allied for Arms Reduction-South Africa (Ecaar-SA), has delivered an open letter to British finance minister Gordon Brown to rethink Britain's role in the arms deal.

Brown, who arrives in Cape Town on Sunday for a meeting of the Commission for Africa, has been asked to consider whether British government professions and pledges to assist Africa would be best served by cancellation of the BAe contracts at no cost to South African taxpayers.

Ecaar-SA chairman Terry Crawford-Browne said the letter suggests that as Brown "drives by the shacks in Khayelitsha and along the road from Cape Town airport - he ponders what contribution Bae Hawk and BAe/SAAB Gripen fighter aircraft can make towards the eradication of poverty".

"As the arms deal scandal resurfaces, Ecaar-SA can confirm that it alerted both the British and South African governments to corruption allegations long before the contracts were signed," Crawford-Browne, a long-time campaigner against South Africa's arms deal, said on Thursday.

"That both governments ignored repeated warnings and proceeded with the contracts and loan agreements is a matter of deliberate fraud. These loans are underwritten by the British government and taxpayers. It is obscene that the British government annually subsidises British arms exports by an estimated £890 million [R10,7 billion] - for weapons essentially made in the first world to kill people in the third world."

Crawford-Browne said that the Joint Investigation Team report tabled in Parliament in November 2001 confirms that the British government exerted massive pressure on South Africa to buy the BAe Hawk and BAe/SAAB Gripen fighter aircraft.

With acknowledgements to Sue Segar and The Natal Witness.