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Canada says entrepreneur Spavor feared detained in China

TORONTO (AP) — A second Canadian man is feared detained in China in what appears to be retaliation for Canada’s arrest of a top executive of telecommunications giant Huawei.

Canada’s Global Affairs department on Wednesday said Michael Spavor, an entrepreneur who is one of the only Westerners to have met North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, had gone missing in China. Spavor’s disappearance follows China’s detention of a former Canadian diplomat in Beijing earlier this week.

“We have been unable to make contact (with Spavor) since he let us know he was being questioned by Chinese authorities,” Global Affairs spokesman Guillaume Bérubé said. “We are working very hard to ascertain his whereabouts and we continue to raise this with the Chinese government.”

Spavor is a fluent Korean speaker with longstanding ties to the North through his company, Paektu Cultural Exchange. He was instrumental in bringing NBA player Dennis Rodman to Pyongyang in 2013 and has organized a number of tours and joint cultural projects with the North since then. His disappearance sparked immediate concern in the circle of people who travel to North Korea. Acquaintances said he was due in Seoul on Monday, but never showed up.

Canada’s announcement came hours after Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland said she was worried another citizen had been detained in China following Monday’s arrest of former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig in Beijing.

At the root of the dispute is Canada’s recent arrest of Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, for possible extradition to the United States.

A Canadian court on Tuesday released Meng on bail, confining her to Vancouver and its suburbs while she awaits possible extradition. The U.S. accuses Huawei of using a Hong Kong shell company to do business with Iran in violation of U.S. sanctions.

The United States and China have taken pains this week to emphasize that their trade talks are entirely separate from the U.S. case against the top Chinese technology executive. But with a few words, President Donald Trump obliterated the distinction on Tuesday, saying he’d wade into the case if it would help produce a trade agreement with China.

“If I think it’s good for what will be certainly the largest trade deal ever made — which is a very important thing — what’s good for national security — I would certainly intervene if I thought it was necessary,” Trump told Reuters in an interview.

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