Pakistan offers help over missing Malaysian jet

Pakistan has offered assistance to the Malaysian government in the international search for a missing Malaysia Airlines passenger plane.

“Our data was available but our radars did not see anything and rightly so because the aircraft it seems, did not come in this direction,” Pakistan’s Foreign Office Spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam said in a press briefing in Islamabad on Thursday.

“They (Malaysians) called a number of leaders as well to ask for help in investigating and tracing the whereabouts of the missing aircraft.”

The Pakistani official dismissed Western media reports that the missing Malaysia Airlines plane might be hidden somewhere in the country.

“Those who make these allegations undermine their own credibility. There are only four or five airports in Pakistan where (a Boeing) 777 can land. I don’t think at any stage the governments of Malaysia or China even hinted at such a possibility. So, this was in the realm of imagination and very wild imagination,” Aslam stated.

The Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER went missing on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, after taking off with more than 239 people on board.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that the officials are exploring the possibility that the aircraft was diverted towards an undisclosed location after the pilot or some other person on the flight turned off the transponders.

At one briefing, US officials were told investigators are actively pursuing the notion that the plane was diverted “with the intention of using it later for another purpose,” the journal said.