Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov on 19 September met with U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in Washington to discuss cooperation in the area of strategic stability, Russian and Western news agencies reported. Ivanov repeated his uncompromising position on the Pankisi Gorge situation, saying that Russia has "tons of evidence" that terrorists from Chechnya, as well as from Arab and Muslim countries, are operating in the Georgian region. Ivanov alleged that some of them have links to Al-Qaeda and said that he has handed this information over to the United States. However, Ivanov commented, even publicly available information is sufficient to prove this. (RIA-Novosti)