Stockholm  - Swedish public broadcaster SVT screened footage Thursday of US Republican Party presidential candidate John McCain leaving North Vietnam after his release from a prisoner-of-war camp.

Swedish writer Erik Eriksson, who covered the Vietnam War as a freelance and for SVT, made the discovery when researching a book on his wartime experience and compiling a 30-minute DVD that would be sold with the book.

"As far as we know, these are the only images of McCain on his release in Hanoi," Eriksson told the Dagens Nyheter newspaper. The footage was filmed 35 years ago - before the era of videotape.

Eriksson told the newspaper that he commissioned a local Vietnamese cameraman in 1973 to film former US prisoners of war on their release at Hanoi airport while he and his Swedish cameraman were back in Sweden editing a film.

The Vietnamese cameraman filmed several hundred former prisoners of war - including McCain - as they left a bus on the tarmac, saluted a US officer and boarded a US Air Force plane.

Eriksson said McCain was limping at the airport, but there was no sign of crutches sometimes mentioned in US accounts.

The footage has since been stored in the SVT archives. A brief clip was available on the SVT website. (dpa)