Remarks on Iraq’s links to al-Qaida were ‘misunderstood’, says Rumsfeld

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday he was misunderstood when he stated hours earlier that he knew of no “strong, hard evidence” linking Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and al-Qaida.

“I have acknowledged since September 2002 that there were ties between al-Qaida and Iraq,” Mr Rumsfeld said in a Pentagon website statement, issued following remarks he made to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York on Monday.

“Today at the council, I even noted that ‘when I’m in Washington, I pull out a piece of paper and say “I don’t know, because I’m not in that business, but I’ll tell you what the CIA thinks” and I read it’.”