PARIS (AP) — French Polynesia's president says leaders in France's collectivity of islands in the South Pacific "lied" to the population over the dangers of nuclear testing.
From 1960 to 1996, France carried out almost 200 nuclear tests in French Polynesia. Images of a mushroom cloud over Mururoa Atoll provoked international protests.
President Edouard Fritch was captured Thursday on Tahiti Nui Television telling local officials: "I'm not surprised that I've been called a liar for 30 years. We lied to this population that the tests were clean. We lied."
In 2013, French media reported that defense ministry documents showed the tests from the 1960s and 1970s were far more toxic than previously acknowledged, with Tahiti exposed to 500 times the accepted radiation levels.
France's overseas ministry declined to comment.
