US Warns Of Pull Out Where Huawei Kit Is Used

The United States continues to ramp up the pressure on Chinese networking giant Huawei Technologies and said the world should be “eyes wide open” about using its technology.

The US continues to campaign against the use of Huawei equipment, much to the frustration of some European telecom bosses, who this week said that excluding Huawei would set Europe’s 5G networks back ‘two years’.

Meanwhile reports are emerging that Canada is likely to grant the extradition to the US of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou to face sanction busting charges.

US pullout

Meanwhile the United States has again warned that it will withdraw from environments where Huawei technology is used.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made the blunt assessment whilst speaking during a visit to Manila about the prospect of the Philippines using Huawei 5G technology.

“Our task has been to share with the world the risks associated with that technology: the risks to the Philippine people, the risk to Philippine security, the risk that America may not be able to operate in certain environments if there is Huawei technology adjacent to that,” Pompeo was quoted by Reuters as telling a news conference.

“We want to make sure that the world has their eyes wide open as to the risks of having that technology to be part of infrastructure, backbone or networks,” he added.

The United States is conducting an intense campaign to persuade allies not to use Huawei kit.

This week a group of US senators said Huawei should be blocked from supplying solar inverters to the US power grid.

Countries such as Australia, New Zealand and the United States have already banned the use of Huawei kit for 5G networks.

CFO extradition

Meanwhile there is movement on the case of Meng Wanzhou, the daughter of the founder of Huawei, Ren Zhengfei.

Wanzhou was arrested in early December by Canadian authorities for alleged sanction busting with Iran. The arrest was carried out on behalf of the United States, and she remains under house arrest in Vancouver.

Wanzhou is facing 23 charges in the US, with the charges split across two indictments by the US Department of Justice.

The first covers claims Huawei hid business links to Iran – which is subject to US trade sanctions. The second includes the charge of attempted theft of trade secrets.

Now it seems that Canada is likely to approve the extradition of Wanzhou to the US. Canada will make the decision by midnight on Friday (0500 GMT Saturday) according to Reuters.

Joanna Harrington, a law professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, was quoted as saying that officials were most likely to give the green light.

“I have no reason to see why they wouldn’t. We have an ongoing long-standing extradition relationship between the United States and Canada,” she told Reuters.

“The United States is a country with which we share a legal culture” and which Canada trusts, said Harrington, an international human rights law specialist.

But if Wanzhou’s extradition is approved, there are likely to be many appeals before she is extradited, as well as official reaction from Beijing.

Wanzhou is due to appear in a Vancouver court on March 6 to demonstrate she is abiding to the terms of the December deal that allowed her to stay out of prison.

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