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Its official

after more than three decades of denial, a high-level parliamentary committee of New Zealand has acknowledged that Vietnam war veterans were exposed to Agent Orange, the powerful herbicide, defoliant and chemical used by the us military. New Zealand's soldiers aided us troops in the Vietnam war. This is the first official acceptance of the fact that exposure to Agent Orange could have caused health problems for New Zealand's war veterans and their children. The New Zealand government has to respond to the committee's report within 90 days.

The report recommends that the government should admit that New Zealand's soldiers were exposed to a "toxic environment' during the war. Wishing government to acknowledge that successive governments had failed to recognise this fact, the report says it should ensure that the children of these soldiers get reimbursed for medical treatment for any condition related to dioxin exposure. John Moller, former president of the defunct Vietnam Veterans Association, said the veterans could now seek punitive and exemplary damages from the government for "negligence and concealing evidence'.

The committee's year-long inquiry heard harrowing testimonies from defence personnel regarding the effects of Agent Orange. New evidence shows that New Zealand troops were exposed to arial defoliant spraying more than 300 times. Australian studies have established high rates of melanoma and prostate cancer among Vietnam war veterans and three times higher suicide rate among their children compared to the rest of the population. They have also reported higher than expected rates of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma among veterans and of adrenal cancer and acute myeloid leukaemia in their children.

Veterans affairs minister George Hawkins said: "The government acknowledges that New Zealand defence personnel served their country in what was an extremely difficult environment and we have a responsibility to ensure that their claims are heard.' This inquiry has jettisoned the findings of two earlier reports, by Wellington School of Medicine and a committee set up in 1999 by then prime minister Jenny Shipley, which concluded that the health problems of Vietnam veterans and their children could not be linked to Agent Orange.

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