A key US Congress committee said Thursday it will hear from a senior Google executive next week on the Internet giant's role in promoting democracy in the wake of a high-profile clash with China.

Google vice president and deputy general counsel Nicole Wong will testify at a House Foreign Affairs Committee's hearing entitled "The Google Predicament: Transforming US Cyberspace Policy to Advance Democracy, Security, and Trade."

The panel announced the February 10 public session amid an ugly spat between Beijing and Google, which has threatened to pull out of the Chinese market over cyberattacks and Web censorship.

It also followed a report by The Washington Post that Google is enlisting the help of the top US electronic surveillance organization to ward off cyberattacks.

Under an agreement still in the works, the National Security Agency (NSA) would help Google analyze those attacks in a bid to better protect the California-based search company and its users from future intrusions, the Post said, citing cybersecurity experts familiar with the matter.

Earlier this week, a US senator asked 30 leading companies, including Amazon, Apple, AT&T, Cisco, Dell, eBay, Facebook, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Nokia and Twitter, for information about their human rights practices in China.

Democratic Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Human Rights and the Law, also announced plans to hold a hearing on global Internet freedom.

He said the hearing would feature testimony from Obama administration officials and from Google and other firms about their business practices in Internet-restricting countries.

"Google sets a strong example in standing up to the Chinese government's continued failure to respect the fundamental human rights of free expression and privacy," Durbin said. "I look forward to learning more about whether other American companies are willing to follow Google's lead."