New Ideas in Congress Follow Ports Scandal

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New legislative proposals responding to the scandal over a Dubai-owned company's attempted takeover of major operations at some major U.S. ports, which touched off a political firestorm, are getting attention in Congress on Thursday. Measures coming before committees in the House and Senate aim to strengthen U.S. cargo security and port safety, and to bring the federal panel that approved the DP World ports deal under tighter oversight by Congress. The multiagency panel, called the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, would be required to investigate any proposed transaction that involved a foreign government or "critical infrastructure" of the country.

The president would be allowed to suspend or block a transaction if it is deemed to threaten or impair national security, under the bill expected to be approved by the Senate Banking Committee. And the panel would have to notify congressional committees and the House and Senate leadership of proposed deals and its investigations of them. In the House, a Homeland Securitysubcommittee planned to vote on the measure addressing cargo security at home and abroad and safety at U.S. ports.

Reps. Dan Lungren, R-Calif., and Jane Harman, D-Calif., sponsored the measure in early March as Congress was in a bipartisan uproar over now-abandoned plans by United Arab Emirates-based DP World to manage terminals at a half-dozen U.S. ports: New Jersey, New York, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia. Nearly identical to a measure pending in the Senate, the House bill would require the Homeland Security Department to lay out a timeline — and meet its targets — for putting radiation portal monitors at U.S. seaports that don't have them.

It also would require the agency to establish standard operating procedures for examining containers. To prevent threats from reaching U.S. soil, the bill would require the Homeland Security Department to assess the security implications associated with foreign ports that want to participate in a U.S. program designed to allow the agency to examine high-risk cargo overseas.

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060330/ap_on_go_co/ports_security_bills