The United States will take more time to assess the decision by the United Kingdom to allow the Chinese tech giant Huawei to participate in the building of the UK 5G network, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters on Wednesday
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 30th January, 2020) The United States will take more time to assess the decision by the United Kingdom to allow the Chinese tech giant Huawei to participate in the building of the UK 5G network, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told reporters on Wednesday.
"We'll evaluate what the United Kingdom did. It's a little unclear precisely what they're going to permit and not permit, so we need to take a little bit of time to evaluate that," Pompeo said.
Pompeo pointed out the US government has spoken at great length with the UK authorities at the political and national security level over the past months.
"Our view of Huawei has been that putting it in your system creates real risk. This is... an extension of the Chinese Communist Party with a legal requirement to hand over information to the Chinese Communist Party," Pompeo said.
Pompeo emphasized that the US position regarding the 5G network is that it should be a Western system guided by Western rules.
"American information only should pass through trusted networks, and we'll make sure we do that," Pompeo said.
On Tuesday, the UK government announced that Huawei would be allowed to participate in the United Kingdom's 5G network development, but with certain restrictions. Huawei is expected to be excluded from all "safety-related" and "safety critical" networks, as well as "sensitive geographic locations," such as nuclear sites and military bases.
London capped Huawei's share of the new market at 35 percent for each of the United Kingdom's four mobile phone operators.
Pompeo said the United States must first see what Huawei actually does and how they will implement what they laid out. From what the US government has seen so far, it must figure out what it means from an execution and implementation perspective as well.
"It's pretty complex. There's also a chance for the United Kingdom to relook at this as implementation moves forward," Pompeo said, adding that the United States will make sure that when American information passes across the 5G network, it is confident the network is a trusted one.
"So we'll work with the United Kingdom. We were urging them to make a decision that was different than the one that they made, and now we'll have a conversation about how to proceed," Pompeo said.
In May 2019, the US government blacklisted Huawei over its suspected connections to Chinese intelligence and has been pushing other countries to refrain from using Huawei's equipment when adopting 5G network technology.
