US port deal collapse may hurt, not help, security

Ft Lauderdale (Fla), Mar 22: The debacle over a Dubai company's thwarted attempt to take over some US port operations may end up undermining US security because of its impact on counter-terrorism cooperation with Arab states, maritime experts said.

The experts yesterday said the furor that led to state-owned Dubai Ports World promising to sell its interest in six US ports it would acquire by buying the global assets of Britain's P&O had been driven by politics, ignorance and bigotry, and not by honest security concerns.

''For four years we have been trying to tell the Arabs that we are not anti-Arab, we are anti-fundamentalist,'' said Bernard Kerik, the former New York Police Department commissioner who oversaw rescue efforts after the September. 11 attacks.

Kerik, who was nominated for homeland security secretary in 2004 but withdrew amid questions about the immigration status of his housekeeper and nanny, said Arab countries were as much a target of al Qaeda as was the United States, and should be embraced as allies, not turned into foes.

''I think they (US Congress) hurt our relationships with people that we are trying to get communication and coordination from,'' Kerik told a maritime security conference in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Kerik said Arab nations' sympathy for the United States could well be in doubt.

''We the United States were looking at all the Arab countries we possibly could to be our partners in the war on terrorism, including Dubai. I got no doubt about what they're thinking now. It's pretty insulting,'' he told Reuters in a later interview.

REDUNDANT EFFORT The US House of Representatives last Thursday approved 91.8 billion dollar President George W. Bush sought for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and for Gulf Coast hurricane relief, and included language in the bill barring DP World from managing American ports because of perceived security risks.

The language was largely redundant as DP World had already promised to sell the U.S. assets it would acquire in the P&O deal, which had been approved by the Bush administration but triggered a Republican rebellion in Congress when it came to light.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, a Republican from California, has also vowed to press ahead with legislation that would require all infrastructure deemed critical to homeland security to be owned by Americans.

Legislation like that would be devastating for the shipping industry, said Philip Murray, chairman of the Maritime Security Council, an industry advocacy group. None of the top 20 global shipping companies and top five port terminal operators is American.

Singaporean, Chinese and other foreign companies that run many US port terminals were trembling, Murray said.

''We don't know where this avalanche is going to end up,'' he said.

Kim Petersen, executive director of the council and chief executive of port security consultants SeaSecure, said the debate over DP World was tinged by an ''undercurrent of bigotry.'' It ignored the fact that the U.S. customs service and the US Coast Guard would in charge of port security whether P&O retained its operations or sold them to DP World.

''It all comes down in my mind to how do we expect to win the hearts and mind of the Islamic world if at every turn we elect to treat Muslims as our enemies?'' Petersen said.

Reuters