U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo | Pool photo by Stefan Rousseau/AFP via Getty Images | Pool photo by Stefan Rousseau/AFP via Getty Images Pompeo: UK-US relations ‘not at risk’ over Huawei decision London remains ‘a partner and a friend,’ US secretary of state says.

LONDON — U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Thursday the relationship between the U.K. and the U.S. "is not at risk" over London's decision to give China's Huawei a role in Britain's 5G network.

At an event in London, Pompeo said the U.K. remains "a partner and a friend" and the two countries' "deep and complex" bilateral relationship allows the U.S. administration to raise concerns.

"It is powerful to know that I have a colleague across the table or across the ocean to whom I can say, 'Here's how America sees this, let's work together to solve this,'" Pompeo said, speaking next to the U.K. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab.

"Our relationship is not at risk by having gone to our partner and said, ‘Hey, would you guys think about X, Y or Z’ — or one of the hundreds of issues where two nations interact and work together,” he said.

On Tuesday, the British government decided to give Huawei a limited role in the rollout of 5G in the U.K., arguing that banning the firm outright would delay the network by up to three years. The Chinese company would be banned from access to sensitive data but supply the "edge" of the system, such as antennas.

“The decision was made on Tuesday. I’m confident we can work together to implement that decision and work to get this right,” Pompeo said at the London event, organized by the Policy Exchange think tank.

Huawei insists it is independent of China's ruling party and that data on its networks is secure. But on Wednesday Pompeo branded the company "an extension of the Chinese Communist Party" and "a real risk," adding that the U.S. "will make sure that when American information passes across the network we are confident that the network is a trusted one."

He stressed that point on Thursday, declaring, “We will never permit American national security information to go across a network that we don’t have trust and confidence in. That’s the standard, whether it is a Microsoft system, it is the same whether it is a Ericsson, Nokia system, that’s the standard if it is a Chinese system."