WASHINGTON, Oct 22: The Pentagon on Wednesday rebuffed a call by a senior Republican senator for a general to be reassigned for casting the “war on terrorism” in religious terms in speeches to church groups.

Larry DiRita, the acting Pentagon spokesman, said Lt Gen William Boykin had apologized for his remarks, promised not to make more speeches, requested an official review, and had a distinguished military record.

“When you weigh the preponderance of all those things, nobody is thinking about asking him to step aside,” DiRita told reporters.

Senator John Warner, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, on Tuesday urged US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to temporarily reassign Boykin from his post as deputy undersecretary of defence for policy while the Pentagon inspector general reviewed the case.

The disclosure last week that in speeches to church groups across the country over a two year period Boykin cast the war on terrorism as a Christian struggle against Satan set off a furore that shows little sign of subsiding.

In one of his most widely quoted remarks, the general referred to a Somali warlord who in 1993 boasted on CNN that he would never be captured by Boykin’s commandos because Allah protected him.

“I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol,” Boykin said.

A statement last week by the general apologizing if he had offended anyone failed to quiet the controversy, and on Tuesday Rumsfeld said he had agreed to the general’s request for an inspector general’s review.

But Warner’s response from the Senate floor late Tuesday indicated that at least some key members of Congress believe the Pentagon has not gone far enough.

“I do think that it is very important that the administration and the department take very seriously General Boykin’s statements,” said Representative Jim Turner, a Texas Democrat who just returned from Iraq.

Turner told a Pentagon news conference that some change in Boykin’s status was appropriate “simply to send the message not only to the people of our country, but to people around the world, that we are firmly in accord that the war on terrorism is not a war against Islam.”

Representative Jim Saxton, a Republican member of the House Armed Services Committee who led the congressional delegation to Iraq, agreed with Turner but said he would follow Rumsfeld’s lead on the matter. —AFP