Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein
KUALA LUMPUR: Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein said yesterday it was baseless to blame Malaysia for the missing Malaysia Airlines (MAS) Flight MH370, which was an unprecedented incident.
Asked if Malaysia had shared its sensitive military information with the aviation authorities when flight MH370 disappeared on March 8, he said there was nothing to benchmark the incident against.
“You are looking so far back when we are already looking at narrowing down a specific phase of our search and recovery operation. And, it’s unfortunate that we are still speculating on matters, which is not looking forward.
“What I want to do with the formation of the ministerial committees as well as the international investigation panel to be tabled to the cabinet in next few days is to address all these issues,” he told reporters at a press conference held at Putra World Trade Centre here.
He said it was important right now to look forward and move to the next phase of the search and not back-petal by trying to put the blame on Malaysia.
Hishammuddin said that the information would be forthcoming once the aircraft and its black box were found.
Asked on why Attorney-General Tan Sri Gani Patail was currently in the United Kingdom to discuss on the black box ownership and whether there was any legal implication, he said that the cabinet had direct the former to look at it, especially as 26 countries were involved in the search mission.
“So we have diplomatic and legal challenges, we got next-of-kin and that is why we have established these (three ministries) committees so that these responsibilities could be divided among those with the opportunities to get the best expert advice,” he said.
Hishammuddin said his main concern was to find the truth and personally felt that it was not important who had custody on the black box.
“It is about finding the truth and to do what we have to reveal what is in the black box,” he said.
On reports that an American lawyer showed up at the home of the passengers’ families, Hishammuddin said such reports were worrying and advised the families concerned to inform the relevant authorities so that it could be dealt accordingly.
On another note, he said an international investigation team would be set up, comprising the Transport, Defence and Foreign Affairs ministries’ committees, led by their three deputy ministers and the memorandum to be presented to the Malaysian cabinet, probably, by next week.
“Deputy Foreign Minister Datuk Hamzah Zainuddin will look into various issues relating to the next-of-kin of Flight MH370’s passengers, Deputy Transport Minister Datuk Aziz Kaprawi will oversee the terms of references of international teams and technicalities of the investigations while Datuk Abdul Rahim Bakri will supervise and monitor the deployment of search assets to locate the aircraft,” he said.
On April 5, Hishammuddin announced the formation of an international investigation team and three ministerial committees to probe and coordinate the case of flight MH370 that has been missing for more than a month.
There are an airworthiness group that will examine maintenance records, structures and systems; an operations group that will examine flight recorders, operations and meteorology as well as a medical and human factors group that will look at psychology, pathology and survival factors. — Bernama