Lance Armstrong will not agree to a retest of six samples from his first Tour de France win to see if they contain EPO traces.

Pierre Bordry, president of the French anti-doping agency (AFLD), had raised the possibility of asking the American to undergo a new analysis of the urine samples taken from the 1999 Tour.

With Armstrong set to make a comeback in 2009 after three years away from the peloton, Bordry felt such a move would give the seven-time Tour winner "a chance to confirm that he never cheated in his brilliant career".

But Armstrong will not agree to the AFLD's request, insisting the matter is in the past.

"He is not interested in discussing again results from samples taken in 1999," Mark Higgins, Armstrong's media spokesman, is quoted as saying in L'Equipe.

"I will refer the AFLD or whoever will ask the questions on this subject to the Vrijman report."

Higgins is referring to a report, published in 2006 by Dutch lawyer Emile Vrijman, which cleared Armstrong of doping in the 1999 Tour and accused anti-doping authorities of misconduct in dealing with the American.

In an age of doping scandals that have rocked the sport over the past few years, many sceptics still doubt that Armstrong was clean when he won his seven successive Tours between 1999 and 2005.

The rider has never been caught cheating, however.

His urine samples from the 1999 Tour are frozen in a drug-testing laboratory just outside Paris.