Although security concerns mounted this week over the acquisition of IBM’s PC business by China’s largest PC maker, Lenovo Group, the companies say they are cooperating with a review panel set up to deal with such issues.Three Republican congressmen said this week in a letter to U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow that the deal could pose a threat to U.S. national security and deserves a closer review by the U.S. Congress and government agencies before a decision is made on whether or not to approve the deal.The U.S. Treasury Department’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) is examining the deal. IBM said it is already cooperating with CFIUS. “IBM has filed the required legal notice with the Committee on Foreign Investment,” said Edward Barbini, an IBM spokesman. “IBM is following all the normal and routine procedures in the review of the transaction.”Lenovo’s chief executive, Yang Yuanqing, said the company had not received any notice from Washington that the deal could not go ahead, The Financial Times reported.“The acquisition is proceeding as normal,” Yang said, adding that Lenovo would cooperate closely with any US investigation. “I don’t think [the transaction] is a threat to the US’s national security”, Yang said, because PCs were relatively low-end technology.In their letter, the congressmen said the $1.75 billion deal could result in the transfer advanced technology and corporate assets to the Chinese government, along with licensable or export-controlled technology, and may result in certain U.S. government contracts involving PCs being fulfilled by the Chinese government, according to a statement released by the House Armed Services Committee, IDG News Service said.One international trade and technology expert, however, said national security concerns would not appear to be serious enough to merit stopping the deal. “We view this as an economic issue, recognizing this is a global economy,” said Bob Cohen, a senior vice president with the Information Technology Association of America, a trade association representing 380 IT companies.“We don’t view this as a national security issue,” he said. “This (IBM’s PC business) is commodity technology manufactured in China.”Cohen said he expects the deal to be approved once the 90-day CFIUS review process is completed. Todd Malan, executive director for the Organization for International Investment, said he hoped the deal would not become a political issue. “If, in fact, these are low-tech products, maybe they (IBM and Lenovo) will move through the process quickly,” Malan said. Technology Industry