Put your minds at rest. I am not hinting at or suggesting, any pullout by the IT related prospective investment linked to Smart City @Malta.

I am merely writing about the Dubai pullout after the furor that began when Dubai Ports World bought the British Shipping Company P & O, giving the United Arab Emirates-owned company control over terminals in six major US ports.

American analyst Eben Kaplan remarked that in a globalised world preserving national security while promoting economic growth is a daunting challenge for any nation’s leadership, adding that determining the proper balance between these interests was at the heart of a debate that has raged in Washington in past weeks.

While many might have read about this issue very few must have bothered to go into the nitty-gritty of the whole uproar that took the US by storm.

Effective 2 March, the purchase would have given Dubai Ports World control over facilities in New York, Miami, Newark-Port Elizabeth, Philadelphia, New Orleans and Baltimore.

The politicians in the affected states and cities were the ones who raised the alarm. In blunt terms their message to the media was that they were reluctant to see such vital infrastructure fall into Arab hands.

Others in Washington questioned the Bush administration’s quick approval of the sale.

It was against this scenario that so many ‘hands’ suddenly decided to work with local officials to block the takeover through legal and legislative channels.

The primary objection that critics cited was that two of the 9/11 hijackers were from the UAE and that the emirate was used as a financial and operational hub by al-Qaeda. With this hysterical reaction in mind some said that the UAE owned company operating portions of US ports could provide a link for terrorists to transport operatives and/or weapons into the United States.

What complicated matters further was that the House Homeland Security Committee made it clear that federal approval of the sale was focused on how the company carries out its procedures, but it does not go into who they hire or how they hire people.

In a globalised world it seems rather tenuous that foreign ownership of terminals should or could make ports more vulnerable.

After all the UAE has long been considered a US ally in the ‘war on terror’ and many saw the fact that the 9/11 hijackers used the UAE as a hub as irrelevant.

Nevertheless a number of senators, including Hillary Rodham Clinton, indicated that they had legislation in mind banning the sale of terminal operations at US ports to foreign entities.

But the majority of port terminals across the country are already foreign run.

For instance, more than 80 per cent of the terminals in the largest US port, the port of LA, are operated by foreign companies.

DP World is a state owned entity of the UAE, a Persian Gulf monarchy. Yet many of its senior leaders are Americans including the CEO himself.

The Bush administration did not treat this matter lightly as many implied. When it signed off on the 13 February sale of P & O to DP World it did so only after unanimous approval by the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States.

Some of the main security concerns at US ports are that some nine million containers are estimated to enter US ports every year. The volume is so vast that only a small percentage of these containers can be effectively searched. The greatest concern is that terrorists could smuggle a weapon of mass destruction into the US in an unchecked container particularly since in many ports from which US bound cargo originates, there is little security oversight, which makes it possible to fill a container with people or weapons intended to harm the United States.

Another growing concern is the vulnerability of shipments of liquefied natural gas to terrorist attacks while in US harbours. The reason why the majority of US port terminals are operated by foreign companies is that most shipping companies are foreign-owned.

All this might explain the concern that the US authorities have about the operations at our own Freeport. Particularly since the Iranian Shipping Line Company started operating to and from Malta.

What I find rather strange is that while the Americans talk at great length about globalisation, when they actually step into a globalised economy and the rules of the game are different, they see things through a different perspective.

I personally believe that one other ‘concern’ from the US side – although not clearly spelt out – was that Dubai has an immense trade with Iran, not to mention a substantial Iranian community. Of the 1.6 million people presumed to live in Dubai, 90 per cent are expats and perhaps as many as 100,000 of those are Iranians. Either permanent residents or citizens who got their citizenship just a few years ago.

There is no doubt that this deal was not appraised from a purely commercial angle but also from a geo-strategic perspective.

One sincerely hopes that one particular proposal that essentially bans foreign ownership of critical US infrastructure does not go through because in practical terms it would mean that this could even include such industries as food, water, energy, telecoms and banking.

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Leo Brincat is the opposition spokesman for Foreign Affairs and IT.