US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel said on 25 April that Syrian government forces had used the nerve agent sarin. "Our intelligence community does assess, with varying degrees of confidence, that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale in Syria, specifically, the chemical agent sarin," he told reporters in Dubai. A day earlier, however, he said he had not seen conclusive evidence. "Suspicions are one thing, evidence is another," he told reporters in Cairo. "I think we have to be very careful here before we make any conclusions. That's not at all questioning other nations' intelligence, but the United States relies on its own intelligence, so until I can see that intelligence I really don't have anything else to say."
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