Chirac Defends Nuclear Testing

French President Jacques Chirac, making his first visit to Polynesia since a final round of nuclear tests in the South Pacific in 1995, defended the decades of testing that some islanders say gave them cancer.

Chirac, in the French territory of Tahiti, said the tests helped establish France as a world power.

But hundreds of former test-site workers want Paris to recognize their claims that the blasts made them sick.

Dancers wearing traditional garb and beating drums greeted the president the day before in Papeete, the capital.