In a Thursday statement, the Singapore Foreign Ministry said that the country will allow US officials to scrutinize the work of a research institute associated with Huawei Technologies - a China-based telecoms firm - which the US suspects of espionage.

At its Sunday press conference, a day ahead of the official opening of the four-day 2013 Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain, China-based device manufacturer Huawei Technologies unveiled its latest smartphone - the Ascend P2; which, as per the company's claims, is "the world's fastest smartphone."

According to the latest statistics shared by International Data Corp (IDC), Shenzhen, China-based telecom biggie Huawei Technologies became the world's third-biggest smartphone vendor - after Samsung and Apple - during the 2012 fourth quarter.

In a move which underscores Huawei's attempts to venture into the Western markets, the China-based electronics company has unveiled two key mobile devices at the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) 2103 in Las Vegas.

Reuters has recently unearthed documents which show that China-based bigwig telecommunications manufacturing firm Huawei apparently played loose with trade sanctions in 2010, when one of its main partners allegedly offered to sell embargoed Hewlett-Packard (HP) computer gear to Iranian companies.

The UK Government will reportedly blacklist Huawei if the country’s security & intelligence agencies find any malware or spyware in the Chinese communications giant’s UK operations, but any such move could lead to a damaging multibillion-pound trade war between the UK and China.

Blacklisting of Huawei could also derail the roll-out of the UK’s economically crucial 4G mobile internet services.