WASHINGTON — Two leading senators have asked the Obama administration to warn South Korea against allowing Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications firm, to build large parts of a next-generation network for the capital city of Seoul, arguing that it could give the Chinese government a way to enter the networks of a major American ally.
The issue appears almost certain to come up when Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. arrives in Seoul later this week, the last stop on his Asian trip.
At a moment when the United States is already protesting China’s establishment of an “air defense zone” over disputed territory in the East China Sea, the Huawei issue is bound to be another irritant in an increasingly contentious discussion with the government of the Chinese president, Xi Jinping.
The White House would not say whether Mr. Biden was planning to bring the issue up with the leadership in Seoul.
But a senior administration official, while declining to talk about the diplomatic discussions between Washington and South Korea, noted that “we do have concerns about Huawei, evidenced by the fact that Huawei was excluded in October of 2011 from taking part in the building of America’s wireless emergency network for first responders, due to U.S. government national security concerns.”
In that case, and in others, Huawei has been blocked from playing a major role in the American telecommunications market for fear that it would build a “back door” into its systems that would give the Chinese government entry points into the telecommunications networks and Web traffic.
For years, Huawei has dismissed those arguments, arguing that the company has no significant link to the Chinese government, and that its systems are open for scrutiny by regulatory authorities.
Recently, senior company executives have said they had all but given up on the American market.
The warning about the Seoul network came in a private letter to Secretary of State John Kerry, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, and the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr.
In the letter, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California and the chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, cited the close American and South Korean intelligence and military ties.
They warned that “the integrity of telecommunications infrastructure is critical to the operational effectiveness of this important security alliance” and asked for an “assessment of the potential threats” of having Huawei acting as a supplier to a new, advanced system in Seoul.
The senior administration official, who requested anonymity because it involved a sensitive diplomatic issue, would not say how the White House planned to respond to the letter.
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