Nats confident of getting Agent Orage inquiry

The National Party is confident it will get a parliamentary inquiry into the exposure of New Zealand troops to Agent Orange in Vietnam following new evidence they were exposed to it.

Retired officer John Masters, commander of 161 Battery Royal New Zealand Artillery in Vietnam, said this week he had a map issued to him when serving in the province which showed the area was subject to chemical defoliation.

The revelation follows Otago University's Wellington School of Medicine review of the health problems of New Zealand Vietnam veterans, released last November, which said New Zealand troops "generally served in Phuoc Tuy province, where there was no aerial spraying".

National MP Judith Collins said she had seen the map and it raised enough issues to justify an inquiry.

"It is not some internet fake and it raises serious questions about the report, whether the veterans were exposed and what harm it did," Ms Collins told NZPA.

She believed she had the support of enough MPs on the health select committee. Labour does not hold a majority on the committee in its own right and the Greens had indicated to Ms Collins they would support her call for an inquiry.

"All MPs on the committee, with the exception of Labour, have indicated they will support me."

The committee meets today and could vote on terms of reference for the inquiry which could look at the Government-commissioned report on Agent Orange exposure.

The report's principal author, Deborah McLeod of Otago University's Wellington School of Medicine, said this week that the map, if authentic, contradicted just one sentence of a commissioned report into Agent Orange use.

"We sourced that information from summaries... they'd compared satellite pictures of Vietnam with military records of where spraying took place and they have concluded that the levels of exposure of New Zealand and Australian troops were very low."

She said the issue of the map had been "blown out of proportion", and whether or not veterans were exposed to Agent Orange was not the issue.

"The issue is did that exposure cause them harm? Did that exposure cause the health of their children to be harmed? There doesn't seem to be any evidence that it has."

Mr Masters said the map proved spraying took place,

"Whether it was Agent Orange, Green or Yellow - and all these other colours did exist - and what the degrees of dioxin were, that is for much cleverer people to pronounce on."

Prime Minister Helen Clark said earlier this week she wanted to be assured New Zealand veterans received the same treatment as those from other countries.

"I would want to know that the veterans from New Zealand who went to Vietnam got the same consideration as all other veterans," she told reporters.

"As new medical evidence comes to light -- if it does come to light -- we should take full note of that.

"Various studies have been done, it's hard to be conclusive, but the key thing is that our veterans shouldn't be given any less consideration than others."

Mr Masters sat on the board of the New Zealand Agent Orange Trust, which throughout the 1980s and '90s disbursed an $800,000 settlement from United States chemical manufacturers to 605 New Zealand soldiers who served in Vietnam.

Although the trust had wound up, veterans were continuing to have a range of medical problems, Mr Masters said.

- NZPA