The Official Opposition has accused the Justice Department of refusing to release documents pertaining to a request by German prosecutors for assistance from the government on their investigations into the arms deal.

The DA spokesman on the arms deal, Eddie Trent, said yesterday that this flew in the face of the government's assurance that it had nothing to hide on the multibillion rand arms procurement and would investigate the matter if new evidence emerged.

The DA MP said the government's refusal to give his party documents on the German re-quest showed that where there was smoke there was fire.

Trent said he had submitted two applications to the Justice Department in June requesting access to "the mutual legal assistance between South Africa and the United Kingdom and Germany, on their investigations into the allegations of corruptions surrounding the arms deal".

Instead of being given the requested documents, he got a written parliamentary response from Minister in the Presidency Essop Pahad, who stated: "The department, after corresponding with the prosecutor's office, was awaiting further details from the German authorities, for instance concerning the names of alleged suspects and what assistance might be required, when the investigation was dropped."

Trent said that if there were no irregularities in the arms procurement and the government had co-operated fully with Germany and the UK, "then why is the government so reluctant to hand over the documents which would shed light on the details of their co-operation?"

The conclusion that could be drawn was that the Germans had dropped their investigation after the government had failed to co-operate with them, he charged.

Justice Ministry spokesman Zolile Nqayi disputed Trent's suggestion that the government had refused to co-operate with German prosecutors.

He said the Germans had sent a request to the department to "investigate unnamed people".

Justice department director-general Menzi Simelane had written back asking the Germans to provide the names of individuals they wanted to investigate.

"The last correspondence (in March) from the Germans was that they will provide us with the names of people (they wanted to probe)" said Nqayi. "How can you allow a foreign agency to in-vestigate unnamed people?"

Meanwhile, the Presidency has declined to be drawn into claims by suspended prosecutions boss Vusi Pikoli that the Scorpions had sought an audience with President Mbeki in 2006 over its arms deal probe.

The President had referred the Scorpions to his legal adviser, ad-vocate Mojanku Gumbi, Pikoli told the Cape Argus at the weekend.

Although the Scorpions had met with Gumbi in about 2006, it was not clear what the outcome of the discussions were, Pikoli said.

The Presidency has repeatedly asserted - most recently in a parliamentary answer last week - that no investigative agency had approached Mbeki for assistance.

With acknowledgements to Siyabonga Mkhwanazi and Cape Argus.