ISLAMABAD: Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak held a telephone conversation with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Tuesday and sought Pakistan’s help in tracing missing Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777.
A Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 carrying 227 passengers and 12 crew vanished from radars while it was on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing last week.
Talking to media on Tuesday, the prime minister’s special assistant on Aviation Shujat Azeem said that “Prime Minister Sharif expressed sympathies with him and assured every possible cooperation.”
“As per request from Malaysian aviation authorities, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) of Pakistan has saved entire data of the day and time when the jet went missing and would be sharing it with Malaysian authorities,” Azeem told media.
“Although there is no evidence that plane headed towards Pakistan but as a goodwill gesture we are sharing our data with Malaysian government,” Azeem said.
The special assistant said that the CAA has asked the Malaysian authorities to send their official to Karachi to look at the data.
In addition, he said that the Malaysian aviation authorities also spoke with Pakistan Air Force (PAF) chief Tahir Rafique Butt and sought cooperation in tracing the missing jet.
The Malaysian authorities have contacted some 25 countries for their help and cooperation and Pakistan is among such countries, Azeem said.
“India comes before Pakistan, so how it is possible that the plane could have headed towards Pakistan without being tracked by Indian radars,” Azeem questioned, adding that “What they are looking for is any minor flying object on our radars at that time.”
Earlier in the day, the federal minister for information Pervaiz Rasheed reiterated while talking to media that the missing jet was not in Pakistan.
The information minister said that the jet could not have landed in Pakistan as there were only a few airfields in the country which could accommodate such a large aircraft.
