A6
NATION/WORLD
East Oregonian
Tuesday, February 19, 2019
China accuses U.S. of blocking its tech development
By JOE MCDONALD
Associated Press
BEIJING — China’s govern-
ment on Monday accused the
United States of trying to block the
country’s industrial development
by alleging that Chinese mobile
network gear poses a cybersecu-
rity threat to countries rolling out
new internet systems.
And in a potential blow to the
U.S.’s effort to rally its allies on the
issue, British media reported that
U.K. intelligence agencies found
it’s possible to limit the security
risks of using Chinese equipment
in so-called 5G networks.
The U.S. argues that Beijing
might use Chinese tech companies
to gather intelligence about for-
eign countries. The Trump admin-
istration has pressured allies to
shun networks supplied by Hua-
wei Technologies, threatening the
company’s access to markets for
next-generation wireless gear.
Huawei, the biggest global
maker of switching gear for phone
and internet companies, denies
accusations it facilitates Chinese
spying and said it would reject any
government demands to disclose
confidential information about for-
eign customers.
The U.S. government is trying
to “fabricate an excuse for sup-
pressing the legitimate develop-
ment” of Chinese enterprises, said
the spokesman for the Chinese for-
eign ministry, Geng Shuang. He
accused the United States of using
AP Photo/Andy Wong, File
In this Dec. 11, 2018, file photo, a woman browses her smartphone as she walks by a Huawei store at a shopping
mall in Beijing.
“political means” to interfere in
economic activity, “which is hyp-
ocritical, immoral and unfair
bullying.”
U.S. Vice President Mike
Pence, speaking last weekend in
Germany, urged European allies
to take seriously “the threat” he
said was posed by Huawei as they
look for partners to build the new
5G mobile networks.
The 5G technology is meant
to vastly expand the reach of net-
works to support internet-linked
medical
equipment,
factory
machines, self-driving cars and
other devices. That makes it more
politically sensitive and raises the
potential cost of security failures.
Pence said Huawei and other
Chinese telecom equipment mak-
ers provide Beijing with “access to
any data that touches their network
or equipment.” He appealed to
European governments to “reject
any enterprise that would com-
promise the integrity of our com-
munications technology or our
national security systems.”
In what could amount to a turn-
ing point for the U.S. effort to iso-
late Huawei, Britain’s National
Cyber Security Centre has found
that the risk of using its networks
is manageable, according to the
Financial Times and several other
Protests slam Trump’s emergency
declaration for border wall
NEW YORK (AP) — Protest-
ers converged in cities around the
country on Monday to decry Pres-
ident Donald Trump’s declaration
of a national emergency to fund his
planned U.S.-Mexico border wall.
Organized by the liberal group
MoveOn and others, the demonstra-
tions took the occasion of Presidents
Day to assail Trump’s proclamation as
undemocratic and anti-immigrant.
“Trump is the national emer-
gency!” chanted a group of hundreds
lined up at the White House fence,
where some held up large letters spell-
ing out “stop power grab.”
In downtown Fort Worth, Texas,
a small group carried signs with
messages including “no wall!
#FakeTrumpEmergency.”
In Newark, New Jersey, Kelly
Quirk told a gathering of dozens that
“democracy demands” saying “no
more” to Trump.
“There are plenty of real emer-
gencies to invest our tax dollars in,”
said Quirk, part of a local progressive
group called Soma Action.
There were some counter-protest-
ers, including in Washington, where
there was a brief scuffle in the crowd.
Trump’s declaration Friday shifts
billions of dollars from military con-
struction to the border. The move
came after Congress didn’t approve
as much as Trump wanted for the
British media outlets.
The reports cited anonymous
sources as saying that there are
ways to limit cybersecurity risks,
and that the U.K.’s decision would
carry weight with European allies
who are also evaluating the safety
of their networks.
The British government is to
finish a review of its policies on
the safety of 5G in March or April.
The office of British Prime Minis-
ter Theresa May said Monday that
“no decisions have been taken.”
If eventually confirmed, “such
a decision by the U.K. would be a
strong message and could be influ-
ential in the medium term,” said
Lukasz Olejnik, a research associ-
ate at Oxford University’s Center
for Technology and Global Affairs.
The British review “could inev-
itably serve as an input or a refer-
ence point in other countries’ risk
assessments,” he added.
European officials, including
a vice president of the European
Union, have expressed concern
about Chinese regulations issued
last year that require companies to
cooperate with intelligence agen-
cies. No country in Europe, how-
ever, has issued a blanket veto on
using Huawei technology in the
way the U.S. has urged.
The U.S. Justice Department
last month unsealed charges
against Huawei, its chief financial
officer — who had been arrested in
Canada — and several of the com-
panies’ subsidiaries, alleging not
only violation of trade sanctions
but also the theft of trade secrets.
EU warns of reduced imports
if Trump puts tariffs on cars
By RAF CASERT
Associated Press
AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster
Cat McKay of Alexandria, Va., holds a sign during a protest on Monday at La-
fayette Square near the White House in Washington, to protest that President
Donald Trump declared a national emergency along the southern border.
wall, which the Republican considers
a national security necessity.
His emergency proclamation calls
the border “a major entry point for
criminals, gang members, and illicit
narcotics.”
Illegal border crossings have
declined from a high of 1.6 million in
2000.
Trump’s declaration is facing legal
challenges, and critics have argued
he undercut his own rationale for the
emergency declaration by saying he
“didn’t need to do this” but wanted to
get the wall built faster than he other-
wise could.
“President Trump declared a
national emergency in order to spend
billions of taxpayer dollars on his bor-
der wall obsession,” Manar Waheed
of the American Civil Liberties Union
told protesters rallying in a Washing-
ton park before heading to the nearby
White House fence. The ACLU has
announced its intention to sue Trump
over the issue.
Sex abuse survivors to meet with
Vatican summit organizers
By NICOLE WINFIELD
Associated Press
VATICAN CITY — The organizers of
Pope Francis’ summit on preventing clergy
sex abuse will meet this week with a dozen
abuse victims who have descended on Rome
to protest the Catholic Church’s response to
the crisis and demand an end to decades of
cover-up by church leaders, officials said
Monday.
These abuse survivors will not be
addressing the summit of church leaders
itself. Rather, they will meet Wednesday
with the four-member organizing commit-
tee to convey their complaints.
The larger summit of some 190 presi-
dents of bishops’ conferences from around
the world, plus key Vatican officials, begins
Thursday.
At a press conference on Monday, orga-
nizers called the summit a “turning point”
in the church’s approach to clergy sex abuse.
The Catholic Church has long been criti-
cized for its failure to hold bishops account-
able when they covered up for priests who
raped and molested children.
They said the summit would focus on
three key aspects of dealing with the crisis:
making bishops aware of their own respon-
sibilities to protect their flocks, the conse-
quences of shirking those responsibilities,
and the need for transparency.
Archbishop Charles Scicluna, the Vat-
ican’s leading sex crimes investigator and
an organizer of the meeting, said transpar-
ency was key, since the church’s knee-jerk
response of denial and silence in the past
had only exacerbated the problem.
“Whether it’s criminal or malicious
complicity and a code of silence, or whether
it’s denial or trauma in its very primitive
state, we need to get away from that,” he
told reporters. “We have to face the facts.”
Chilean abuse victim Juan Carlos Cruz,
who is coordinating the survivor meet-
ing, told The Associated Press he hopes
for a “constructive and open dialogue” and
for summit members to convey survivors’
demand that bishops stop pleading igno-
rance about abuse.
“Raping a child or a vulnerable person
and abusing them has been wrong since the
1st century, the Middle Ages, and now,” he
said.
Francis called the summit in Septem-
ber after he himself discredited Cruz and
other Chilean victims of a notorious pred-
ator priest.
Francis was subsequently implicated in
the cover-up of Theodore McCarrick, the
onetime powerful American cardinal who
just last week was defrocked for sexually
abusing minors as well as adults.
Francis has urged participants to meet
with abuse victims before they came to
Rome, to both familiarize themselves with
victims’ pain and trauma and debunk the
widely held idea that clergy sex abuse only
happens in some parts of the world.
Survivors will be represented at the sum-
mit itself, but only in a few key moments of
prayer.
Summit moderator the Rev. Federico
Lombardi said he would gladly receive
any written messages from other survivors,
expressing an openness to hear from a broad
cross-section of victims.
BRUSSELS — The European Union warned U.S. Presi-
dent Donald Trump on Monday that the bloc will step back
from a commitment to buy more American soybeans and
liquid gas if European cars are hit with punitive tariffs.
The U.S. Commerce Department is expected to issue its
guidance on whether auto imports endanger U.S. national
security enough to justify import taxes, giving Trump 90
days to decide whether to impose them.
EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said that
during a summit in Washington last summer, Trump prom-
ised not to damage trans-Atlantic trade with such measures.
“Trump has given me his word that there will be no car
tariffs for the time being,” Juncker told the German newspa-
per Stuttgarter Zeitung.
“I believe him,” Juncker said. “However, should he
renege on that commitment, we will no longer feel bound
by our commitments to buy more U.S. soya and liquid gas.”
European Union spokesman Margaritis Schinas said that
if the U.S. goes ahead with “actions detrimental to Euro-
pean exports, the European Commission would react in a
swift and adequate manner.”
The EU and the United States have been trying to work
out a trade deal but progress has been slow.
Over the weekend, German Chancellor Angela Merkel
said U.S. authorities appeared to have already concluded
that European cars were a national security threat.
She noted that German automaker BMW’s biggest plant
is in South Carolina.
Merkel said if the cars produced there “are suddenly a
threat to the United States’ national security, that startles
us.”
Since the summer summit, when Juncker made a com-
mitment to buy more U.S. soybeans, exports to Europe have
soared largely because of market conditions.