Bicyclic and tricyclic fused pyrimidine derivatives have received much attention in connection with biologically significant systems such as purines, 1-7 pteridines 8-14 and alloxazines. The synthesis of the above categories has been accomplished by the cyclisation of 6-aminouracil derivatives and ring transformation of other fused pyrimidine-2,4diones. 15,16 In extending our recent work on simple bicyclic xanthines, 6,7 tricyclic alloxazines 17,18 and pyridodi pyrimidines 19 this paper reports a novel synthesis of 3-benzyl-9-methylxanthine (5), 3,9-dimethyl-8-phenylxanthine (7), 7 dipyrimidopyridines 10a-f and pyrimido [4,5-d]pyrimidines 11a-d via Mannich reactions.The synthesis of 3,9-disubstituted xanthines 5,7 has been performed by various approaches [20][21][22] and we report a more favoured sequence from the 1-substituted-6-chlorouracils 1a, b 23,24 (Scheme 1) by reaction with methylamine and N-methyl benzylamine respectively where the 6-amino compounds 2 and 6 were obtained in a good yield. Nitrosation of 2 afforded the 5-nitroso compound 3, which underwent reductive formylation to 4 which readily undergoes intramolecular cyclization with formamide to furnish the xanthine 5 or refluxing the tertiary amine 6 with sodium nitrite in the presence of acetic acid resulted in ring closure in one step giving the 3,9-dimethyl-8-phenylxanthine (7), probably via a 5-nitroso compound 6a and its tautomer 6b. All the products were assigned by 1 H NMR, UV spectra and microanalysis.It was found that the intramolecular cyclisation of 6-(Nalkylanilino)uracils with dimethylformamide (DMF)-POCl 3 25