The Hindu : 'Rumsfeld spoke in a vague sense'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Jun 15, 2002

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'Rumsfeld spoke in a vague sense'

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

Washington June 14. The White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said on Thursday that the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, spoke only in a "generalised and vague sense'' about the presence of the Al-Qaeda in Kashmir, during his visit to the subcontinent.

"I don't think it was a declaration of anything. I think what he said was that — not hard evidence that they're there, they may be there, we can't rule it out; but he said that he didn't have any actionable evidence, any intelligence information of a hard type. And he talked about scraps of information'', Mr. Fleischer said on Thursday.

"So the Secretary spoke in a generalised and vague sense about what we may or may not know about the presence there...I think you have to be careful'', he cautioned the media on reading too much into what Mr. Rumsfeld may or may not have said in India on the issue of the Al-Qaeda in Kashmir.

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