WASHINGTON, Feb 22: US President George Bush on Tuesday threatened to veto any legislation delaying a controversial deal giving a United Arab Emirates company control of operations at six major US ports.

The president made his veto threat after top US lawmakers earlier in the day said they would draft legislation to prevent the deal from going ahead until a thorough vetting process had been completed.

The lawmakers also asked the president to block the deal, citing security concerns.

“Our plea to the president would be, put this contract on hold right now. Do not let it go forward,” Democratic US Senator Chuck Schumer said.

Mr Schumer, along with his fellow New Yorker lawmaker, Representative Peter King, called on President Bush to revoke the deal approved by the Treasury Department’s Comm-ittee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS.

Unless US lawmakers prevent it, Dubai Ports World’s controversial acquisition of the British firm which currently manages the ports is to be finalized on March 2.

The two New York lawmakers said they have prepared legislation that, if passed by Congress, would freeze the CFIUS deal.

“The president has authority to overrule CFIUS anytime he wants,” Mr Schumer said. “If he did it, it would make Americans rest easy, and then we wouldn’t have to do our legislation,” he said.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist issued a similar call to delay the deal, which he said raises ‘serious questions regarding the safety and security of our homeland’.

Bill Frist, usually a staunch ally of the president’s, said he too would sponsor legislation to delay and review the deal involving UAE state-owned ports operator, Dubai Ports World.

“The decision to finalise this deal should be put on hold until the administration conducts a more extensive review,” Bill Frist said in a statement, adding that the deal could have ‘a major impact on America’s security’.

Furore mounted in the United States over the deal, with politicians calling to cancel it and a US company filing suit to block it.

According to media reports, the lawsuit was filed by Miami-based Continental Stevedoring and Terminals Inc against the

6.8 billion dollar takeover of Britain’s Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co (P and O), which currently operates the US ports.

The controversy has rocketed to the top of the US political agenda, as Democrats and Republicans have joined forces to try to upend it, criticising what they describe as the UAE’s spotty record on combating terror.

Even the usually Bush-friendly New York Daily News was scathing in its assessment of the deal.

“Now those ports are in the hands of a firm owned by a sheikdom suspected of connections to Al Qaeda terrorists, Iraqi insurgents and Iranian flame-throwers,” the daily wrote on Monday, pointing out that the United Arab Emirates was home to two of the hijackers in the Sept 11, 2001, terror attacks.

“How can we even think of permitting the government of the UAE to control five of the busiest ports on the East Coast?” asked the newspaper.

NO RISK: However, federal government officials said they carefully had vetted the deal, and that it posed no security risk.