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UK to compensate subjects of secret weapons testing

Britain's defense ministry said on Thursday it had agreed to pay a total of £3 million (US$6 million) in compensation to 360 military veterans who took part in secret chemical weapons tests during the Cold War.

Defense Minister Derek Twigg apologized to the veterans, many of whom claim to have suffered serious long-term health problems as the result of the tests, but said the government did not admit liability.

"The government accepts that there were aspects of the trials where there may have been shortcomings and where, in particular, the life or health of participants may have been put at risk," Twigg said in a written statement to lawmakers.

"The government sincerely apologizes to those who may have been affected," he said.

In the 1950s and 1960s, hundreds of servicemen and women were exposed to substances including nerve agents, poisons and LSD at the Porton Down military research facility in southwest England.

At least one of the test subjects died. In 2004, an inquest ruled that Royal Air Force mechanic Ronald Maddison, 20, had been unlawfully killed when the nerve agent sarin was dabbed onto his arm during tests at Porton Down in 1953.

The government eventually paid £100,000 to his family.

A government-commissioned study concluded in 2006 that some of the experiments at Porton Down seriously deviated from ethical standards. But the report also concluded that the tests, conducted between 1939 and 1989, were necessary in the context of global conflict and Cold War-era tensions.

The government says all those who took part were volunteers offered extra pay and time off as an incentive. But a group of veterans has fought for years for compensation, claiming they were tricked into participating in what they believed was research into a cure for the common cold.

Twigg said the £3 million sum was "in full and final settlement" of claims by the veterans. The ministry said the veterans and their lawyers would decide how the money was divided up.
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