MH370 mystery: Malaysia seeks Pakistan aid in missing jet search

PM Razak urges Islamabad to scan radar data for any leads.

ISLAMABAD:

Pakistani authorities have found ‘no traces’ of the missing Malaysian jetliner in its airspace, Islamabad informed the Malaysian government on Tuesday.

The information was shared at the ‘highest level’, according to Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Aviation Capt (retd) Shujaat Azim.

“Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak phoned Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Tuesday, requesting his help in finding flight MH370, which went missing on March 8 with 239 people on board,” Azim told The Express Tribune.

“Prime Minister Nawaz expressed his concern and extended sympathies [for those aboard the flight] with his Malaysian counterpart,” he said. “[But] it was discussed that the flight would have to first cross Indian airspace before entering Pakistani airspace and radar on either side had no information about the missing plane.”

The Malaysian premier, meanwhile, urged his Pakistani counterpart to direct his country’s maritime and aviation agencies to scour all radar and satellite data that may help in finding the missing plane, Azim told The Express Tribune. Premier Razak also appealed to Pakistan to join search efforts by thoroughly scanning its territorial and contiguous international waters in the Arabian Sea as far as possible, he said.

Upon Premier Nawaz’s order, Air Chief Marshal Tahir Rafique Butt also spoke to his Malaysian counterpart on telephone, the prime minister’s assistant added.

Britain’s The Independent on Sunday newspaper suggested the missing Malaysian airlines flight may have been ‘deliberately flown under the radar’ to Taliban-controlled bases in Pakistan. Citing sources in Kuala Lumpur assisting with investigations, the report said Malaysian authorities were seeking full diplomatic permission to rule out the theory that the plane could have flown to areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan not under government control.

“An emergency is declared and the Pakistan Air Force moves into action whenever any aircraft illegally enters Pakistani airspace,” Foreign Office spokesperson Tasneem Aslam said in a media interview on Tuesday. “Pakistan’s radar network had no information about the missing Malaysian plane,” she added.

At the same time, she said Pakistan was ready to share any information on the missing plane if it became available.

Talking to reporters following a ceremony at the National Book Foundation in Islamabad, Information Minister Pervaiz Rashid also dismissed reports about the plane entering Pakistan as ‘purely speculative’.

“The data of Pakistan’s air traffic control system is available and nothing is being hidden… No unusual activity was witnessed by the air traffic control system,” he said. “It was not a balloon which someone can put in his pocket and disappear [with]. It is a big plane with over 300 passengers onboard,” he added.

The minister also pointed out there were only four airports in Pakistan where such a large aircraft could have landed.

A day earlier, Indian authorities, too, ruled out the theory that the missing flight could have crossed Indian airspace while evading its radar network. “These are wild reports without any basis… a pilot would have to know the precise location of all Indian radars and surveillance systems to be able to get around them,” an Indian defence ministry official said on Monday.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 19^th, 2014.