Found this one on this forum a while ago. Was it cyanblues post perhaps? Itīs important you use both tags as I think Netscape/Mozilla broswers are using the second form an iE uses the first... not sure though. But this should do it:
echo "<PARAM NAME=FlashVars VALUE=\"asVariable=" . $variable . "\">";
echo "<embed src=\"file.swf\" FlashVars=\"asVariable=" . $variable . "\" quality=\"high\" etc...>";
Wish I could give credit to the original poster but I donīt remember who I got it from...