GERMANY’S government is still in talks on whether China’s Huawei will be allowed to participate in building the country’s high-speed Internet infrastructure, German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier said Tuesday.

Asked to comment on a Wall Street Journal report saying that a preliminary decision had been made by a group of relevant ministries to allow Huawei, the world’s biggest producer of telecom equipment, to participate, Altmaier said: “I explicitly cannot confirm this report, because we are still in the process of discussing this with other ministries.”

Huawei is facing scrutiny in the West over security concerns. The United States has called for its allies not to use Huawei technology.

The Wall Street Journal report said that the decision to give Huawei’s involvement in Germany’s 5G network the go-ahead was due to be discussed by leading members of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives later.

A German government source said Tuesday that Berlin would probably not take a quick decision on whether to let Huawei participate in building its next-generation mobile infrastructure.

An auction for the 5G mobile network is due to start in the second half of March amid growing signs that the government may not exclude Huawei altogether.

Berlin plans to tighten security requirements for telecom firms wanting to join the 5G buildout in Germany, Altmaier said last week, effectively making tighter oversight of Huawei possible.

And Huawei’s head in Germany told Handelsblatt that the Chinese Government did not get involved in its business, adding the firm would work on being open and transparent.

“The State does not have a stake in Huawei and it keeps out of our business,” Dennis Zuo told the newspaper.

Ren Zhengfei, Huawei’s founder and chief executive, pledged not to share any customer information with the Chinese Government and said the company had never done so, in an interview with CBS News that aired Tuesday.

“For the past 30 years, we have never done that. And (for) the next 30 years to come, we will never do that,” Ren said.

Ren also said the company did not have a backdoor to share customer data with the government without his knowledge.

“It is not possible,” he told CBS, saying if there were such an opening the United States would have uncovered it already.

On Monday, Ren said in a separate interview with the BBC that the technology company would not undertake any spying activities and that it could shift its business investments to other countries amid an ongoing U.S. pressure campaign.

Ulrich Kelber, Germany’s data protection commissioner, told Handelsblatt he had no indications that Chinese products were taking significant amounts of data through the backdoor.

(SD-Agencies)