China says US should withdraw arrest warrant for Huawei executive

China's foreign ministry called in the US ambassador on Sunday to lodge a "strong protest" over the arrest in Canada of Huawei's chief financial officer, and said the United States should withdraw its arrest warrant.

Meng Wanzhou, Huawei's global chief financial officer, was arrested in Canada on December 1st and faces extradition to the US, which alleges that she covered up her company's links to a firm that tried to sell equipment to Iran despite sanctions.

The executive is also the daughter of the founder of Huawei.

Chinese vice foreign minister Le Yucheng told US ambassador Terry Branstad that the US had made an "unreasonable demand" on Canada to detain Meng while she was passing through Vancouver, China's foreign ministry said.

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“The actions of the US seriously violated the lawful and legitimate rights of the Chinese citizen, and by their nature were extremely nasty,” Le told Branstad, comments similar to those he made to Canada’s ambassador the night before.

China strongly urges the US to pay attention to China's solemn and just position and withdraw the arrest warrant on Meng, Le added.

“China will respond further depending on US actions,” he said, without elaborating. Le also told the Canadian ambassador on Saturday that there would be severe consequences if it did not immediately release Meng.

US sanctions laws

The US has been looking since at least 2016 into whether Huawei shipped US-origin products to Iran and other countries in violation of US export and sanctions laws, Reuters reported in April.

Companies are barred from using the US financial system to funnel goods and services to sanctioned entities.

US senator Marco Rubio told CBS's Face the Nation on Sunday he would "100 per cent absolutely" introduce something in the new Congress that would ban Chinese telecom firms from doing business in the US.

“We have to understand Chinese companies are not like American companies. Okay. We can’t even get Apple to crack an iPhone for us in a terrorist investigation,” he said.

“When the Chinese ask a telecom company, ‘We want you to turn over all the data you’ve gathered in the country you’re operating in’, they will do it. No court order. Nothing like that. They will just do it. They have to. We need to understand that.”

Rubio was a strong critic of China’s ZTE Corp, which pleaded guilty in 2017 to violating US laws that restrict the sale of American-made technology to Iran. – Reuters