I'm not certain, but since you are getting a parse error, I would try
curly brackets on your if statement:
<<fig=TRUE,echo=F>>=
par(mfrow=c(1,1))
if(exists("x")) {
plot(x,x)
} else {
plot(1,1,type="n")
text(1,1,"data not available.\n")
}
@
HTH,
+ seth