House Panel Votes to Block Takeover of Port Facilities
WASHINGTON — 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.
