Bush accused of ignoring port sale law

WASHINGTON -- The senior Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee angrily accused the Bush administration Thursday of ignoring the law by refusing to extend an investigation of a United Arab Emirates company's takeover of significant U.S. port operations.\nClashing with a Treasury Department official on a mission to calm a political uproar, Sen. Carl Levin said the law has language specifically requiring a longer review than the one that an interagency committee conducted, if a business deal affects national security.\nOn Capitol Hill Sen. John Warner, R-Va., questioned why not a single government agency believed that the sale would affect the country's homeland security. \nThe Treasury official, Deputy Secretary Robert Kimmitt, and officials from other agencies said a multi-agency group spent three months reviewing the port deal and said that all concerns about security were satisfied.\n"We're not aware of a single national security concern raised recently that was not part of (the three-month review)," Kimmitt said.\nLevin insisted that the law that established the multi-agency panel specifically said that any such review should be lengthened by 45 days if it could have an impact on national security.\nJust hours before the hearing, President Bush declared that "people don't need to worry about security" in the deal.\nLevin, raising his voice at the briefing, told Kimmitt, "If you want the law changed, come to Congress and change it but don't ignore it."\nKimmitt responded, "We didn't ignore the law. Concerns were raised. They were resolved."\nWarner then jumped in to assure Levin that he would ask Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to prepare a memorandum on the administration's interpretation of the law.\nLevin also questioned the UAE's past record on terrorism matters, saying the country backed the Taliban and allowed financial support for al-Qaida. He said the UAE has an "uneven history" as "one of only a handful of countries in the world to recognize the Taliban regime in Afghanistan." He added that millions of dollars in al-Qaida funds went through UAE financial institutions.\nLevin at one point noted that a special commission that investigated the terror attacks against the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, concluded that "there's a persistent counterterrorism problem represented by the United Arab Emirates."\n"Just raise your hand if anybody (at the witness table) talked to the 9/11 commission," commanded Levin. There was no response among the handful of administration representatives.\nSen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., also was critical, calling the approval process "a failure of judgment" because officials "did not alert the president, the secretary of the treasury and the secretary of defense" that several of our critical ports would be turned over to foreign country.\nSen. John Warner, R-Va., and chairman of the committee, emphasized UAE's cooperation in the war on terrorism, noting that it allows a large number of port calls by U.S. military and commercial ships and that it had made its airfields available to the U.S. military.