NZ 'did supply agent orange'

UPDATE - Apparent confirmation that New Zealand was involved in supplying the deadly Agent Orange defoliant completes a jigsaw for Vietnam War veterans.

Transport Minister Harry Duynhoven has acknowledged the chemical was sent to a US base from Port Taranaki in the 1960s, after sighting documents produced by the veterans, it has been reported.

Veterans spokesman John Moller says it is only a partial victory in their decades-long campaign for recognition.

He says successive governments must have known what happened, and this may explain their reluctance to front up about the effect Agent Orange had on the soldiers.

He says it is too polite to say the veterans have been misled, because they have provided plenty of evidence in the past, and it has been ignored.

John Moller says families with affected children must be given compensation, and it is now up to individual veterans to decide if they want to pursue legal claims against the Crown.

He says he has had all the pieces of the jigsaw for a long time, but it has taken the help of a Sunday newspaper journalist to fit them together.

The National Party is alleging a cover-up after the apparent admission. Use of the deadly defoliant, and the consequences for soldiers exposed to it, have been the subject of a decades' long battle for veterans of the conflict.

National's Health spokeswoman, Judith Collins, says she cannot understand why Mr Duynhoven did not tell a recent select committee about New Zealand's involvement, if he knew.

She says if information has been withheld from the committee, all it has achieved is to slow the process of getting recognition for the veterans.

Ms Collins says it is mysterious why this information is surfacing now. She says we need to find out how much the Cabinet knew about what Mr Duynhoven is saying.

- NEWSTALK ZB