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Bipartisan political wildfire

BY JOHN RILEY | STAFF WRITER

February 22, 2006

It has been portrayed by critics as a security issue, but the exploding controversy over the Bush administration's approval of a Dubai-based company's deal to help operate a half-dozen East Coast ports also involves a potent brew of election-year opportunism and anti-Arab demagoguery that could damage America's standing in the global economy, experts say.

"Everyone is playing politics, and it's very unfortunate," said Judith Kipper, a respected Middle East specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations. "It reconfirms to Arab and other allies that the United States is not a friendly place for investments and financial transactions. The U.S. is missing out ... because they don't have any assurance that their assets won't be frozen some day."

Criticism of Dubai Ports World has spread like a bipartisan prairie fire in the 10 days since New York Sen. Charles Schumer first complained that the company might somehow facilitate terrorist plots. Yesterday, the debate ratcheted to a new level when GOP Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist threatened to block the deal, and President George W. Bush said he would veto any such effort.

Whatever their actual concerns about port safety, the battle has given Democrats like Schumer and Sen. Hillary Clinton a chance to outflank Bush and the Republicans on a national security issue. Republicans like Frist are splitting with Bush because they fear the gambit might succeed just months before the congressional mid-term elections, political observers say.

"It sure sounds like a demagoguing issue to me," said Stuart Rothenberg, publisher of the Rothenberg Political Report. "Democrats believe it's an opportunity to out-homeland-security the Republicans, and the Republicans don't want to give the Democrats an opening. There may be a serious debate, but I don't think they're aiming at the debate. They just seem to be aiming at scoring political points."

So far, opponents of the deal have not cited evidence of security breaches at any of the more than a dozen container ports the Dubai company - the world's seventh largest port operator - manages from Asia to Latin America. Instead, critics like Schumer and Long Island Republican Rep. Peter King have cited the fact that two Sept. 11 hijackers came from the United Arab Emirates, the plotters moved money through the Emirati banking system, and the country was one of only three to recognize Afghanistan's Taliban government before Sept. 11.

But the suspicion strikes some experts as odd for two reasons. While port operators employ the longshoremen that unload cargo ships, United States immigration officers check those coming ashore and customs officers are the ones who decide which cargo containers they want to inspect. The post-Sept. 11 approach has been to try to check manifests and cargo before it leaves for the United States - and port of Dubai has been praised as a cooperative partner with the United States in that effort.

"The role the U.S. government is currently playing in port security does not change with the purchase by Dubai Ports World," says former Coast Guard officer Stephen Flynn, who has written a book about port vulnerabilities.

In addition, foreign-based companies have operated U.S. ports for years. Dubai had ties to Sept. 11, but so did America - which allowed all 19 hijackers to spend months here, use the banking system and buy airline tickets. In the Mideast, it has been a friend, calling on Saddam Hussein to step down before the United States invaded Iraq, cooperating with the military and pledging $100 million to Katrina victims.

It is being singled out, complains James Zogby, head of the Arab American Institute in Washington, D.C., not because of its behavior, but because it is Arab. "This really is no more than Arab-phobia," Zogby said. "For these politicians, the national interest of the United States is synonymous with their next election. They're not thinking this is a real threat. It's an election year, it's an Arab country, and there's a post-9/11 insecurity they can exploit. It's a lethal brew, and they're stirring it for all it's worth."