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U.S. lawmakers laud security at Dubai-operated Dominican Republic port

The Associated Press

Sunday, December 10, 2006

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic

A group of U.S. lawmakers who examined a Dubai-operated Dominican port on Sunday praised its security measures as they concluded a 24-hour visit to the Caribbean country.

The six Democrats toured a port east of Santo Domingo operated by DP World, the United Arab Emirates-based company forced to sell its recent American acquisitions after an uproar by Congress earlier this year over concerns about security against terrorism.

The delegation praised the port's U.S.-loaned scanning system, part of a U.S. Customs and Border Protection initiative to keep contraband and nuclear, biological and chemical weapons from being shipped to the United States.

"If we're going to be involved in trade, we're going to have to partner ... with companies that we may feel uncomfortable with, to make sure we secure the American people," Congressman Kendrick Meek, a Florida Democrat and House Homeland Security Committee member, told The Associated Press.

DP World does not have input in the port's inspection process, Meek told a press conference later in the day.

The visitors watched workers drive a shipping box through a scanner before taking a bus tour through canyons of stacked containers, about a third of which were bound for U.S. ports such as Houston, Miami, New Orleans and New York.

The tour was given by David Sanborn, a DP World executive whose nomination by President George W. Bush to head the U.S. Maritime Administration was withdrawn in March after the objections of Sens. John Kerry and Bill Nelson.

The Puerto Caucedo facility began scanning cargo under the U.S. government's 24-country Container Security Initiative in September. It currently scans less than a quarter of its cargo, but plans to eventually scan all shipments that pass through the port, said Sanborn, now a senior vice president and managing director of DP World's Americas Region.

Led by Congressman Eliot Engel of New York, the incoming chairman of the House International Relations subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, the group spent most of its trip Saturday visiting a sugar mill and the villages of poor, mostly Haitian workers. The group left for Haiti on Sunday afternoon.

They later met with the Dominican foreign minister to discuss the country's entrance into the Central American Free Trade Agreement, as well as human rights abuses against the country's 500,000 to 1 million Haitian migrants, many of whom live here illegally.

Several members of the delegation ? which included congressional Representatives Donald Payne of New Jersey and Barbara Lee, Maxine Waters and Lynn Woolsey, all of California ? said additional legislation may be needed to ensure the free-trade agreement guaranteed workers' rights.

The village trips prompted criticism from Dominican commentators and some leaders, who accused the U.S. delegation of meddling in their affairs ? a charge Engel rejected.

"Let's face it, there's a lingering resentment in Latin America about the United States," he told the AP. "One of the things we can do is to go to different countries and show we don't want to tell them what to do, that we come in friendship."

Engel also asked the foreign minister to lower the high consulate fees faced by thousands of Dominican residents who live in his New York district.