China is using Huawei to drive a wedge in the UK-US special relationship - senator

LONDON, June 2 (Reuters) - China is using telecoms giant
Huawei to try to drive a wedge between Britain and the
United States, Republican senator Tom Cotton told British
lawmakers on Tuesday.

Cotton is one of several members of the U.S. Congress who
have sought to put pressure on Britain to reverse its January
decision to give China's Huawei Technologies a limited role in
building Britian's next-generation 5G networks.

"It is my hope that the special relationship remains strong
although I fear China is attempting to drive a hi-tech wedge
between us using Huawei," Cotton told the British parliament's
defence committee.

The United States has raised security concerns about Huawei
equipment, saying it could be used to steal Western secrets, and
has warned that allies that use it in their networks risked
being cut off from valuable intelligence sharing. Huawei has
repeatedly denied the U.S. allegations.

Britain has said the involvement of "high-risk" companies
such as Huawei will be capped at 35% and they will be excluded
from the sensitive core of the network.

Last month the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported that, in
the wake of the coronavirus crisis, Prime Minister Boris Johnson
had asked officials to make plans to reduce China's involvement
in British 5G infrastructure to zero by 2023.

"I do hope that as the government refines its decision, that
if it doesn’t reverse it outright, it will mitigate it and
minimise the use of Huawei technology, put it on a shorter time
frame," Cotton said.

"I would welcome that decision to go to zero by 2023 and I
would urge you to try and do so even sooner," he added.

Since the British decision on Huawei, relations between
London and Beijing have grown tense over the situation in Hong
Kong.

On Tuesday, Britain said Beijing should step back from
introducing a national security law in Hong Kong which it said
was in breach of the 1984 agreement marking the handover of its
former colony to China.

(Reporting by Kylie MacLellan and Jack Stubbs; Editing by Angus
MacSwan)