 UAE Brigadier General Musallam Al Rashidi responded to the report by stating that Al Qaeda cannot be reasoned with in the first place and argued that he has men who have been killed by Al Qaeda, he said “They are not willing to negotiate, most of these hard-core guys.They are willing to go and fight.We have guys who have been injured, killed by AQAP and there’s no point in negotiating with these guys.” The notion of the UAE recruiting or paying AQAP has been thoroughly denied by the United States Pentagon with Colonel Robert Manning, spokesperson of the Pentagon, calling the news source "patently false".