House Panel Votes to Block Takeover of Port Facilities

In a biting rebuke to President Bush, a lopsided and bipartisan majority of a major House committee voted Wednesday to nullify portions of a deal that would hand operation of U.S. port facilities to a Dubai company.

Congress and the White House advanced on a collision course as the House Appropriations Committee approved a measure that Bush had promised to veto -- and attached it to a bill the president dearly wanted.

The ports measure, sponsored by Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands), the committee’s chairman, would ensure that Dubai Ports World, a company partly owned and operated by the government of the United Arab Emirates, would not operate any U.S. port facilities.

“We want to make sure the security of America’s ports is in American hands,” Lewis said.

The committee, long a bastion of support for the Bush administration, passed the prohibition, 62 to 2, as part of a bill that included $68 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and $19 billion for Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. If the full House and the Senate go along, the strategy could force Bush to choose between the ports deal and another year of war funding.

As resistance grew, critics of the ports deal gained new ammunition Wednesday from a State Department report critical of human rights practices in the United Arab Emirates, a federation of sheikdoms without a democratically elected government.

Like past annual State Department reports on rights practices around the world, the document cited violations in the UAE, including in Dubai. The report said courts applying Islamic law imposed flogging sentences for prostitution, adultery and consensual premarital sex. In one case, a Dubai court sentenced a pregnant woman to 150 lashes and deportation for adultery.

In the face of solidifying congressional opposition, the White House maintained its support for the turnover of some management authority at the ports to the Dubai company. “The president’s position is unchanged,” spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters on Air Force One on the way to New Orleans with Bush.

The House measure was headed toward approval by the full chamber by next week.

In the Senate, efforts to block the ports deal moved more slowly as a result of efforts by Bush’s allies. Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) proposed a measure to scuttle the ports deal as part of a bill designed to end cozy relationships between lawmakers and lobbyists. Many Senate Democrats supported Schumer, as did some Republicans from states with ports that would be affected.

But Republican leaders moved Wednesday to quash Schumer’s amendment, saying it was out of order and not germane to the ethics bill. Among the powerful Republicans who lined up against Schumer’s amendment was Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

“I remain confident that President Bush is committed to protecting the security of our nation, including our ports,” Cochran said in a statement.

Schumer and other senators said the chamber eventually would approve a measure blocking the purchase by Dubai Ports World of a British company, Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co. The deal would include port facilities in six U.S. cities: New York; Newark, N.J.; Philadelphia; Baltimore; Miami; and New Orleans.

The House Appropriations Committee attached Lewis’ provision, which would nullify key portions of the deal, to the bill providing war funding for 2006.

The $68 billion in the funding bill, along with the $50 billion Bush is proposing for next year, would bring the total war costs to about $320 billion in Iraq and $100 billion in Afghanistan, said budget expert Steven Kosiak of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, an independent defense research group in Washington.

In comparable dollars, he said, the Korean War cost $445 billion and the Vietnam War $635 billion.

Underscoring the importance of the war funding measure, top administration officials today will make their case to the Senate. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, along with Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East, will testify before the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Besides funding military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the House version of the war bill devotes money to training Iraqi and Afghan security forces, developing new technologies to counter roadside bombs and upgrading armor plating on military vehicles.

Key in the debate over the ports deal has been the United States’ relationship with the United Arab Emirates. Opponents of the ports deal say the UAE once backed the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, is hostile toward Israel and is a country where two Sept. 11 hijackers once were based. Dubai’s supporters contend it is a dedicated U.S. ally with deep involvement in Western businesses.

“I don’t think this is the right thing to do,” said Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.), one of two House members who voted against blocking the ports measure. “Dubai is a strong ally of the United States in the war on terrorism.”

In its yearly human rights report Wednesday, the State Department said the UAE’s record was mixed in its treatment of residents and foreign workers.

Although the UAE Constitution calls for freedom of religion, Dubai police last year arrested two American women from Tom Cox World Ministries, a Christian group in Arkansas, for passing out Bibles and religious CDs. The two were charged with being “an affront to Islam,” and their passports were seized. They were later released, and left the country.

The report said discrimination against noncitizens, who make up 85% of the UAE population, is illegal. Yet “it was prevalent and occurred in most areas of daily life, including employment, housing, social interaction and healthcare,” the report said. For example, UAE citizens who contract HIV are said to be given full healthcare at no cost, but noncitizens are said to be denied healthcare and deported.

The UAE was not classified among the worst human rights offenders on the State Department list. North Korea, Burma, Iran, Zimbabwe, Cuba, China and Belarus were named as the most systematic human rights violators.

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Times staff writers Richard Simon, Paul Richter and Mark Mazzetti in Washington contributed to this report.