WASHINGTON, Nov 2: The White House on Thursday flatly repudiated then-defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s claim in a May 2004 memorandum that oil wealth has made many Muslims turn “against physical labour”.

“It’s not in line with the president’s views,” spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters after the Washington Post reported the contents of what it described as a sample of the many memoranda Mr Rumsfeld wrote to his staff.

“We are aware that we have a lot of work to do in order to win hearts and minds across the Arab world and the Muslim world. And I can understand why they would be offended by those comments,” Ms Perino said.

The embarrassing revelation came one day after the US State Department official in charge of polishing the US image in the Muslim world, Karen Hughes, announced she was quitting what many consider an impossible job.

The Post cited one such missive as reflecting that oil wealth has sometimes detached Muslims “from the reality of the work, effort and investment that leads to wealth for the rest of the world.

“Too often Muslims are against physical labour, so they bring in Koreans and Pakistanis while their young people remain unemployed,” the Post quoted him as writing. “An unemployed population is easy to recruit to radicalism.”—AFP