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GOP set to battle Bush on port plan

BY J. JIONI PALMER | Newsday Washington Bureau

March 8, 2006

WASHINGTON - Republican leaders on Capitol Hill said yesterday that a legislative showdown with the White House over a proposed deal to give control of operations at six American ports to a company owned by the United Arab Emirates could begin as early today.

"It's pretty clear the House is going to speak on this sooner rather than later," Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) told reporters. He said he expected lawmakers to offer a variety of amendments to block the deal.

Boehner said he expected the issue to be raised today when the Appropriations Committee meets to draft an emergency spending bill and again next week when that same legislation is debated on the House floor.

"I'd like to see it go away ..." Boehner said. "Listen, this a very big political problem. I see it in my district and every district I've been in. ... This had become a very hot political potato."

Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford, the House Homeland Security Committee chairman, said the Bush administration and the United Arab Emirates-owned Dubai Ports World had a quickly shrinking window of time to reach a deal to mollify the concerns of a majority of Republican lawmakers.

"It all depends on what happens in the next 24 to 48 hours," said King, who has suggested that one possible compromise would be if total operational control were vested with an American company.

King, who is in discussions with a senior White House official close to the president, said that only a "pretty significant compromise" could preempt Republicans from joining with Democrats to kill the deal.

"If the choice is going with the Democrats or going with the contract, we might have to go with the Democrats," he said.

King and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) sent a letter yesterday to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, assailing comments by Dubai Ports World chief executive Mohammed Sharaf that the American public needed to be better educated about the deal and that investors would be hurt if it weren't completed.

"We believe that whether or not a financial transaction is on the way to being completed, national and homeland security must trump trade," Schumer said.