Under a secretive agreement with the Bush administration, a company in the United Arab Emirates promised to co-operate with US investigations as a condition of its takeover of operations at six major American ports.

The US Government chose not to impose other, routine restrictions, according to documents obtained by the Associated Press.

In approving the US$6.8 billion purchase, the administration chose not to require state-owned Dubai Ports World to keep copies of its business records on US soil, where they would be subject to orders by American courts. It also did not require the company to designate an American citizen to accommodate requests by the government.

Outside legal experts said such obligations are routinely attached to US approvals of foreign sales in other industries.

Dubai Ports agreed to give up records on demand about "foreign operational direction" of its business at the US ports, according to the documents.

Those records broadly include details about the design, maintenance or operation of ports and equipment. It also pledged to continue participating in programmes to stop smuggling and detect illegal shipments of nuclear materials.

"They are not lax but they're not draconian," said James Lewis, a former US official who worked on such agreements. If White House officials negotiating the deal had predicted the firestorm of criticism over it, "they might have made them sound harder."

The conditions over the sale of London-based Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company were detailed in US documents marked "confidential."

The disclosure of the negotiated conditions came as the White House acknowledged US President George W. Bush was unaware of the pending sale until the deal had been already approved by his administration.

Bush has pledged to veto any bill Congress might approve to block the agreement, but some lawmakers said they still were determined to capsize it.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice tried to US soften lawmakers' opposition to the deal, hailing the United Arab Emirates as a key ally yesterday.

"This is supposed to be a process that raises concerns if they are there but does not presume that a country in the Middle East should not be capable of doing a deal like this," Rice said.

Source: China Daily