Five carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii isolates, collected from the United Arab Emirates in 2006, were investigated to identify the mechanism(s) responsible for carbapenem resistance. Genotyping was performed by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, and the location of the bla(OXA-23) gene was determined by using the endonuclease I CeuI technique and mating-out assays. The four isolates in which the bla(OXA-23) gene was located on the chromosome within a Tn2006 composite transposon were clonally related. The single non-clonally related isolate harboured the bla(OXA-23) gene on a 70-kb transferable plasmid. This study reports on the dissemination of OXA-23-producing A. baumannii isolates in the Middle East.