"retract a statement" is a correct and usable phrase in written English.
It means to take back or withdraw something that was previously said or written. Example: The politician was forced to retract her statement about the new policy after facing backlash from the public.
A witness who claimed to have seen Ghalyoun on one of the trains later retracted a statement.
Earlier this year, he publicly retracted a statement he had made 10 years ago calling Benito Mussolini "the greatest statesman of the 20th century".
The UN World Food Programme partly retracted a statement that looters had raided one of its warehouses containing 15,000 tonnes of food aid.
You don't understand English?" On Wednesday, President Bush's spokesman, Scott McClellan, retracted a statement he made on Monday that Mr. Rumsfeld had been fully involved in the decision to create the new group.
The Hyundai Motor Company, which is planning to build its first plant in the United States, has retracted a statement made earlier this week in which a spokesman said the company would have a cordial approach to the United Automobile Workers.
And on Tuesday night, he retracted a statement, made in an interview, in which he said the Minnesota courts should rule in favor of the Republican, Norm Coleman, in the state's disputed Senate race.
Just days before the offering, the company retracted a statement by its chief financial officer that it would not need to seek additional external financing and it said that it would indeed seek such financing for capital expenditures through 2005.
The Edwards campaign has continued to hammer Flores for retracting a statement he made supporting an increase in the retirement age and then blaming his mistake on a headache.
Meanwhile a spokesman in Brussels appeared to retract a similar statement implying that Catalonia would have to reapply if it seceded from Spain.
But he did not retract an earlier statement that, in cases of rape or incest, it "is not the government's role or anybody else's role to make that decision".
