I found a discussion of this issue, that suggested it might be a misquote ("but" for "and"). That gives the quote some meaning.

"Saying what?

What does Straw mean when he says "They say that it is not on the agenda, but it isn't on the agenda."? Karen 15:06, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Thank you, whoever removed the "but it isn't on the agenda" part of the quote. I'm not sure if it's a mis-quote or he mis-spoke, but it reads better without that bit of confusion in there. Karen 04:51, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

You might be right but is it right to change in qoutations without backup of other/better sources than refered in the sourcelist? international 09:14, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

In this case, the way to do it would be to partially quote Straw and indicate the omission with an ellipsis: "They say that it is not on the agenda…." If the source had a source which indicated the listed source was misquoted, then we could list the more original source, too. He might have actually said it that way - it just caused me to pause while reading it and wonder what he really meant. Yes, it would be wrong to change the quote. If we knew his intentions, we could do this: "They say that it is not on the agenda… [and] it isn't on the agenda.". Quotes, especally, need to be sourced to attribute who heard who say what. This one's not such a big deal. I just thought someone might have read it differently from another source or could explain if it's some kind of colloquialism… Karen 18:55, 13 April 2006 (UTC) "
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Talk:Bush,_Straw_dismiss_Iran_nu...