A month after ‘MH370 ended in Indian Ocean’, Najib not ready to declare aircraft, passengers lost

Najib has given his first interview on the disappearance of MAS flight MH370 to CNN's Richard Quest. - The Malaysian Insider pic, April 24, 2014.
 Despite the lack of leads in locating flight MH370 after almost seven weeks, Putrajaya is still not prepared to declare the aircraft and its passengers are lost, Datuk Seri Najib Razak told CNN in an exclusive interview today.

The prime minister told CNN that Malaysia was still not prepared to declare the 239 aboard the aircraft are dead out of respect for the next of kin.

"At some point in time I would be, but right now I think I need to take into account the feelings of family and loved ones of the passengers.

"Some of them have said publicly that they are not willing to accept it until they find hard evidence," Najib told CNN in an exclusive TV interview with CNN aviation correspondent Richard Quest.

"Still, it is hard to imagine otherwise," Najib added.

Almost a month ago, Najib announced that Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 was believed to have ended its journey somewhere in the southern Indian Ocean.

The conclusion was made after reviewing data from British satellite company Inmarsat and the UK's Air Accidents Investigations Branch.

Najib told CNN that it was a bizarre scenario which was completely unexpected as a Beijing-bound flight, which left Kuala Lumpur just after midnight on March 8, ended up halfway towards the Antartica.

He confirmed that on the night when flight MH370 went missing, military radar picked up an aircraft travelling across the peninsula.

"No military aircraft was scrambled because it was not deemed to be hostile," he told CNN, adding the aircraft behaved exactly like a commercial plane.

On another note, the prime minister also told CNN that the preliminary report, which Malaysia had submitted to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), would be made public next week.

On Wednesday, acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein told a press conference that the report had been sent to the ICAO.

However, Hishammuddin did not reveal whether the preliminary report would be made public, sparking a furious reaction from relatives of passengers aboard MH370.

Usually, preliminary reports to the ICAO were made public and the secretive manner in which Putrajaya was behaving aroused suspicion.

CNN reported that in most cases, if the report was not a controversial document, it was normally made public.

"It is a statement of facts, what actually happened," CNN reported, adding that any controversial or difficult facts could be redacted.

Najib, however, told CNN today that Putrajaya will release its preliminary report on the plane's disappearance.

"I have directed an internal investigation team of experts to look at the report, and there is a likelihood that next week we could release the report," Najib said.

Later in the interview, he gave a more definitive statement, saying the report will be released next week.

On CNN's International Report programme following the interview, Quest said he had an open and frank discussion with Najib.

"Let me make it absolutely clear that the prime minister's people gave us no instructions whatsoever. CNN were not given any restrictions or guidelines.

"We were told 'ask whatever you want, but just also ask about what he (Najib) thinks about Obama's visit'," Quest told programme host Wolf Blitzer.

The search for MAS flight MH370 enters its 49th day with still no sign of debris nor wreckage of the Boeing 777 aircraft in the southern Indian Ocean.

It has also now become the longest search in modern passenger-airline history. The previous record was the 10-day search for a Boeing 737-400 operated by Indonesia’s PT Adam Skyconnection Airlines, which went missing off the coast of that country’s Sulawesi island on January 1, 2007.– April 24, 2014.