Political firestorm intensifies over DPW’s US ports deal

AFP)

21 February 2006

WASHINGTON - Controversy over Dubai Port World’s takeover of operations at six major US ports mounted on Tuesday after US politicians called for reversal of the deal and a US company filed suit to block it.

According to US media reports, the lawsuit was filed by Miami-based Continental Stevedoring and Terminals Inc. against a deal won by Dubai-owned ports operator Dubai Ports World for 6.8 billion dollars.

Continental, the Miami subsidiary of British firm P and O which is being acquired by Dubai Ports World, charged that its sale to the Dubai company would force it to become an “involuntary partner” with Dubai’s government and even “may endanger the national security of the United States.”

The port of Miami is one of America’s busiest and is the focal point for its bustling cruise and vacation industry. Other ports affected in the deal are in New York; New Jersey; Baltimore, Maryland; New Orleans, Louisiana; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The controversy has rocketed to the top of the US political agenda, as Democrats and Republicans have joined forces to try to upend it, criticizing what they describe as the UAE’s spotty record on combatting terror.

Even erstwhile staunch allies of Republican President George W. Bush have parted company with their party’s leader on the issue, and have been in the vanguard in promising hearings as soon as possible after lawmakers return from a brief congressional break.

Republican Representative Peter King, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee in the House of Representatives, told US television on Monday that he was “very concerned” about the deal, saying it was “irresponsible ... to have a company which could have an Al Qaeda infiltration actually inside those ports, knowing what our security procedures are, knowing what’s done in those ports.”

The usually Bush-friendly New York Daily News was scathing in its assessment of the deal.

“Now those ports are in the hands of a firm owned by a sheikdom suspected of connections to Al-Qaeda terrorists, Iraqi insurgents and Iranian flame-throwers,” the daily wrote on Monday, pointing out the United Arab Emirates was home to two of the hijackers in the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.

“How can we even think of permitting the government of the UAE to control five of the busiest ports on the East Coast?” asked the newspaper, which railed in an editorial against the Bush administration's decision “to hand New York over to the UAE.”

However, federal government officials said they carefully had vetted the deal, and that it posed no security risk. The Treasury Department’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States has approved the deal.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told CNN television on Sunday the transfer of ports management had been given “a very thorough review and where appropriate necessary conditions or safeguards have to be put into place.”

He said it was important to prevent rigorous security measures from interfering in the free market.

“We have to balance the paramount urgency of security against the fact that we still want to have a robust global trading system,” Chertoff said.

King, however, disputed the notion that the review had been thorough.

“The fact is that this was a very compressed investigation. The most was 20 to 25 days and only a few days were spent on looking at the security aspects.

“If you were nominated for a sub-Cabinet post today, there would probably be a thousand times more intense investigation of you than there was of this company,” he told ABC television on Monday.

Dubai Ports World's acquisition of British firm Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company is to be finalised on March 2.

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