India will work to remove the restrictions on telecom equipment by Chinese manufacturers, Indian Telecom Minister Andimuthu Raja said Friday, the China Business News reported.

Raja said he hoped to resolve the problem of Chinese telecom gear imports in a couple of weeks. "Some issues were there," Raja said. "We wanted to find out some solutions how it can be amicably settled." Raja reportedly met with the country's Home Minister and won his support on solving this issue.

In June, India banned telecom equipment imports from 26 vendors, 25 of whom are Chinese companies.

According to the newspaper, India will announce new rules for Chinese telecom gear vendors to enter the Indian market. India's Home Ministry has designated 14 international independent certification bodies to conduct security audits on telecom gear manufacturers. This means the 25 Chinese telecom companies need to pass the third-party security audit in order to get back into the India telecom market. The Chinese companies also need to turn over its software codes for the audit and promise its gear doesn't contain any malicious software.

Meanwhile, the Indian government has the right to visit the plants of these vendors and monitor the operation of the gears they provide. Both telecom carriers and gear vendors will face fines if any infringements are found.

Sources said most Chinese vendors had "agreed in principle" to abide by these new regulations, while some large European vendors showed discontent over the requirement to submit software codes.

An executive with Huawei Technologies expressed optimism that India will announce the list of certification bodies that provide security audits on all gear vendors by the end of this month.

China's business press carried the story above on Tuesday. China.org.cn has not checked the stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

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