Lawmaker upset by silence on another Dubai deal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. lawmaker on Tuesday fumed that the Bush administration refused to divulge anything about a security review it is conducting of a Dubai-owned company that is planning to take over several plants in the U.S. that make equipment for defense contractors.

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), an inter-agency panel led by the Treasury Department, is reviewing the $1.24 billion takeover of Doncasters, a British engineering group with U.S. holdings, by state-owned Dubai International Capital.

Barrow said the Treasury Department's reluctance to discuss the latest proposal with him suggested it had learned little from the congressional outcry over a now-abandoned deal that would have allowed another Dubai company to take over some U.S. port operations.

"If I can't find out from my own government what is going on, it ain't congressional oversight," Barrow said in a telephone interview with Reuters.

"We (lawmakers) can't find out things ... We have no reason to believe they (the administration) are doing anything other than sleepwalking through the review process," he said.

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