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U.S.: port takeover by Dubai firm in hot waters

Atul Aneja

Leaders want deal scrapped for security reason

DUBAI: United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has embarked on a tour of West Asia, which includes a visit to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) where a controversy over a successful bid by the Dubai ports authority to manage six American ports has been raging.

A political storm has been brewing in the U.S. political circles after the Committee on Foreign Investment approved the takeover in January. Following the approval, Dubai Ports World (DP World), a state-owned company in the UAE, is entitled to run major commercial operations at the ports of Baltimore, Miami, New Jersey, New Orleans, New York and Philadelphia. This has become possible, as DP World has acquired the Peninsular and Oriental, a British company that has been managing these ports in the past.

Top U.S. politicians, including Congressmen, now want the deal either frozen or scrapped, citing that port security could be compromised if an Arab country that was hostile to Israel was in charge of managing key American ports. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham on Sunday said on Fox television, "It's unbelievably tone deaf politically at this point in our history, four years after 9/11, to entertain the idea of turning port security over to a company based in the UAE who avows to destroy Israel."

New York Governor George Pataki, on his part said, "Ensuring the security of New York's port operations is paramount and I am very concerned with the purchase." New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez said he and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, both Democrats, have said they would introduce legislation that would prohibit the sale of port operations to foreign governments.

UAE criticised

Critics of the deal allege that UAE has been a major transshipment point for sending smuggled nuclear components to Iran, North Korea and Libya through a network run by Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan. There have also been accusations about UAE being used as a financial base by hijackers who carried out the attacks on September 11, 2001.

Supporters of the acquisition, however, have begun to question the tendency of U.S. political interference in straightforward commercial deals.

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