Minister in the Presidency Essop Pahad says no one will find a shred of evidence to implicate President Thabo Mbeki or the government in alleged arms deal corruption.

Replying to questions from Independent Newspapers, Pahad also stuck to a firm denial that he had tried to bully ANC MPs into abandoning a multi-agency inquiry into arms deal kickbacks.

He was speaking on the sidelines of a weekend meeting in George of Mbeki's International Investment Council, which meets twice a year.

In his book, After the Party, former ANC MP Andrew Feinstein writes about a meeting on November 8 2000 in which ANC MPs on parliament's standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) were summoned to appear before the ruling party's political committee.

This after Scopa unanimously agreed to propose a multi-agency probe into arms deal corruption, involving the National Prosecuting Authority, the Auditor General, the Public Protector and the Heath Special Investigation Unit.

Feinstein quotes Pahad as telling the ANC MPs: "Who the f**k do you think you are, questioning the integrity of the government, the ministers and the president?"

Feinstein, who is known to take meticulous contemporaneous notes on his hand-held computer, said yesterday he had checked and confirmed the quote with someone else who had attended the meeting before including it in his book.

Pahad said yesterday it was not true that he had bullied the MPs and forced them to reverse their decision as recounted by Feinstein.

"I just think he's not telling the truth … It says more about him than me that he can go around and talk about a confidential meeting that he has had," Pahad added.

On what he had indeed said at the fateful political committee meeting, Pahad replied: "It was a confidential meeting of the ANC's political committee. I don't engage in talking about matters that are confidential."

Pahad, insisting he had not lied, added: "I know what is true and what is not true, and that is no truth at all … There is no way that one minister can have control. It was an ANC decision."

Feinstein writes in his book that among the reasons for the cover-up was that the arms deal helped to fund the ANC's election coffers.

On renewed allegations of corruption, Pahad said: "We have insisted all along that they will never find any evidence on the primary contracts."

With acknowledgments to Angela Quintal and The Star.