Pompeo to seek to repair rift with London on visit

LONDON • United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, during his visit to London, will seek to repair an alliance with an old friend whose defiance on China and Iran underscores Washington's diplomatic isolation.

He arrived in Britain yesterday for a 24-hour stopover, en route to Ukraine and Uzbekistan, fresh from the United States' unveiling of its long delayed Israeli-Palestinian peace plan on Tuesday.

In contrast to much of the hostile global reaction, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government gave the proposal a cautious welcome - an increasingly rare moment of solidarity in the so-called "special relationship".

Mr Johnson, who is scheduled to meet Mr Pompeo today, will be eager to present a unified front as he eyes the prospect of a big new trade deal with the United States that can fill the void of Britain's departure from the European Union tomorrow.

But Mr Pompeo's meetings with him and Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab threaten to become a damage limitation exercise amid strained transatlantic ties over a number of issues.

Mr Pompeo had been doing his best to convince Mr Johnson that allowing China's Huawei tech giant to help build Britain's next-generation 5G network introduced a long-term security threat.

Yesterday, he urged Britain to look again at its Tuesday's decision to approve a limited but still important role for Huawei.

"There is also a chance for the United Kingdom to relook this as implementation moves forward," Mr Pompeo told reporters as he flew to London, according to a pooled report.

"We will make sure that when American information passes across a network we are confident that that network is a trusted one," he said.

"Our view of Huawei is: Putting it in your system creates real risk," Mr Pompeo said.

"This is an extension of the Chinese Communist Party with a legal requirement to hand over information to the... party.

"We'll evaluate what the United Kingdom did."

He added: "It's important for everyone to know there is also real work being done by lots of private companies inside the United States and in Europe to make sure that there are true competitors to Huawei."

Meanwhile, Mr Johnson had been pushing Washington to send back the wife of a US diplomat who is using the cover of diplomatic immunity to avoid prosecution over the death of a teenager in a road accident in England last August.

The US rejected Mrs Anne Sacoolas' extradition to Britain last week.

"We feel this amounts to a denial of justice," Mr Raab said in response. "The UK would have acted differently if this had been a UK diplomat serving in the US."

Disagreements about Iran and a US prosecutor's complaint that Prince Andrew was stonewalling a Federal Bureau of Investigation probe into the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein only add to the layers of tensions.

Mr Johnson might now simply be hoping "there are no precipitous statements from the US saying that's it, this love affair is at an end", said Mr Ian Bond of London's Centre for European Reform.

Mr Johnson may have got a sense of what comes next in a phone call with US President Donald Trump that followed his national security team's final decision on Huawei.

Downing Street said Mr Johnson "underlined the importance of like-minded countries working together to diversify the market and break the dominance of a small number of companies".

Britain will cap Huawei's share of the 5G market to about a third in a bid to create space for new companies to step in.

But Mr Johnson's decision still tests the limits of his well-publicised friendship with the White House chief.

Mr Trump has been a big fan of both Mr Johnson and Brexit. He dangled the promise of a new trade deal with Britain by as early as the end of the year.

Those talks can formally get under way once Brexit takes effect tomorrow at 11pm GMT (7am on Saturday, Singapore time).

Any comprehensive agreement would need ratification in Congress and none is expected when most Americans' attention is focused on the heated presidential election campaign.

But a bare-bones deal that lays the foundation for future talks could work in both Mr Trump's and Mr Johnson's political favour.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, REUTERS