There has already been some unattractive gloating at how Dubai World’s ambitions led it into stormy waters. Some pundits are suddenly claiming that they knew all along that its big plans would lead to trouble.

Yet at the moment what went wrong is the least of the issues that needs to be addressed. There will be time enough to analyze how the problems built until they achieved the level of a crisis on the eve of Eid Al-Adha.

At the moment it is the crisis, not its genesis that must be tackled. There are those in the markets who believe the Dubai repayment delay could be the trigger for a new stage in the international financial crisis, on a par with the US home loan defaults that initiated the financial meltdown.

It would be absurd to pretend that this might not be the case. Enough investors have lost enough money already not to be fearful. And the international banking system, whose folly led the world into financial catastrophe, is clearly highly exposed in Dubai and the wider Gulf.

But by the same token, Dubai’s money troubles do not actually have to be the start of a further collapse of confidence worldwide. Everything depends on how Dubai handles its crisis from here on in, because unfortunately, it is absolutely clear that it did not start off the exercise very well.

Dubai World is not defaulting on its debts — throwing up its hands and saying it cannot pay them. It is merely deferring repayments for six months. This is a very different option. Indeed, risk analysts in the Gulf had long seen that the company’s ambitious expansion program into luxury resorts, offices and apartments was not generating the expected revenues and the business was eating up its capital. A visionary business plan had collided with the grim reality of a worldwide recession. Dubai World had reportedly been in talks with its banks and other lenders for some time.

Some sort of deal was expected. But it seems very much as if whatever solution that was put on the table by the lenders was unacceptable to the company. Thus it went ahead unilaterally and announced its repayment suspension.

In the world of finance, this is rarely a good tactic. Bankers do not like to be ignored. Dubai World may well escape its current difficulties with this maneuver, but banks have long memories. The company will never receive the same welcome, nor indeed keen loan pricing it has achieved in the past. But what is worse, other borrowers in Dubai and the wider Gulf will be marked down as credit risks because of Dubai World’s behavior.

Returning to the present, it is clear that Dubai is going to have to do a lot better in its PR. Making the announcement before Eid and the US Thanksgiving holiday was a tactical blunder — postponing market reaction by only a few hours but angering investors anyway.

From now on, to succeed, Dubai World needs to adopt a far more open and cooperative approach to the international markets.