Port Security Worries, Part II
The AP is now reporting some new information has surfaced regarding the UAE port agreement. Here’s what they’re saying:
The Bush administration secretly required a company in the United Arab Emirates to cooperate with future U.S. investigations before approving its takeover of operations at six American ports, according to documents obtained by The AP. It chose not to impose other, routine restrictions. As part of the $6.8 billion purchase, state-owned Dubai Ports World agreed to reveal records on demand about “foreign operational direction” of its business at U.S. ports, the documents said.
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Dubai Port’s top American executive, chief operating officer Edward H. Bilkey, said the company will do whatever the Bush administration asks to enhance shipping security and ensure the sale goes through. Bilkey said Wednesday he will work in Washington to persuade skeptical lawmakers they should endorse the deal; Senate oversight hearings already are scheduled. “We’re disappointed,” Bilkey told the AP in an interview. “We’re going to do our best to persuade them that they jumped the gun. The UAE is a very solid friend, as President Bush has said.”
It sounds to me like Dubai Port is willing to play by the rules that we establish, which is more than fair in my opinion. It’s also apparent that Mr. Bilkey will have the opportunity to discuss things with key congressional committee chairs before the hearings so they start the hearings with a base of solid information.
This type of openness by Dubai Port will serve them well in the hearings, which will still happen but, I predict, won’t have the bang to them that it appeared they would 2 days ago.
“They’re not lax but they’re not draconian,” said James Lewis, a former U.S. official who worked on such agreements. If officials had predicted the firestorm of criticism over the deal, Lewis said, “they might have made them sound harder.” The conditions involving the sale of London-based Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co. were detailed in U.S. documents marked “confidential.” Such records are regularly guarded as trade secrets, and it is highly unusual for them to be made public. The concessions, described previously by the Homeland Security Department as unprecedented among maritime companies, reflect the close relationship between the United States and the United Arab Emirates.
The UAE is working in good faith on this national security issue and should be rewarded for its cooperation and openness. These aren’t the actions of a company trying to hide something in their operations. Quite the opposite, actually. Turning down this deal would be a foreign policy disaster for years to come because we’d essentially be telling cooperative Arab countries that their cooperation won’t buy them anything in return.
We can’t afford to be put in that position while we’re fighting a war against jihadists.
RELATED:
Port Security Worries I
Port Security: We Weren’t Wrong To Question,
But We’re Satisfied By The Answers
Cross-post at LetFreedomRing
February 22nd, 2006 at 10:28 pm
I agree with this. Especially since you are tying their economic interests to your security issues. If they screw you over in terms of security, they lose money. How many people want to lose THAT much money to make a political point? Still, I feel Congress should dig into this and rightly so since they were left out of the loop. I’d be pissed if I were a Senator too. At this point, I think they have every right and duty to dig into it deeply and make sure everything’s ok. Something like this should be out in the open, not flying under the radar, especially when Bush already has credibility issues with half the country.
February 22nd, 2006 at 10:58 pm
White House: Bush didn’t know about ports deal until it was OK’d
President Bush was unaware of the pending sale of shipping operations at six major U.S. seaports to
February 22nd, 2006 at 11:09 pm
Umm… I’ve been meaning to ask. Can someone tell me if this has gone differently then when the Brits bought those contracts? When the Chinese bough the L.A. ports?
I mean if this is S.O.P. and you don’t like it, change the procedure. If this has been done in a strange new way then I can see some hoopla. Otherwise I don’t see how this should be any different.
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