KUALA LUMPUR: Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott (pix) came to the defence of Datuk Seri Najib Abdul Razak today, saying his Malaysian counterpart was "perfectly entitled" to arrive at the conclusion that MH370's final flight path ended in the Indian Ocean.
He said that after Najib had arrived at the conclusion, "it was his duty to make that conclusion public".
"The accumulation of evidence is that the aircraft has been lost and it has been lost somewhere in the south of the Indian Ocean," Bernama quoted him as telling reporters at the Perth military base coordinating the search ytoday.
"That's the absolutely overwhelming wave of evidence...," he said.
On March 24, Najib had announced that (the flight path of) Flight MH370 ended in a remote region of the southern Indian Ocean based on detailed analyses of satellite data.
Meanwhile at the same press conference, Reuters quoted Abbott as saying that Australia had put no time limit to the search for the jetliner.
"I'm certainly not putting a time limit on it," said Abbott, adding that "the intensity of our search and the magnitude of operations is increasing, not decreasing".
"We owe to the families, we owe it to everyone that travels by air, we owe to the governments of the countries who had citizens on that aircraft, we owe it to the wider world which has been transfixed by this mystery for three weeks now," he said.
A total of 20 aircraft and ships were searching the remote seas off the Australian southwest coast ytoday for MH370.
Australia is coordinating the international hunt which involves about 100 personnel searching from on board surveillance aircraft and 1,000 sailors in ships in or near the search zone.
"This is an extraordinarily difficult exercise. We are searching a vast area of ocean and are working on quite limited information," the Malaysian Insider quoted Abbott as saying.
"Nevertheless, the best brains in the world are applying themselves to this task, all of the technological mastery that we have is being applied and brought to bear here. If this mystery is solvable, we will solve it. But I don't want to underestimate just how difficult it is."
Meanwhile, Najib will leave for Perth tomorrow (Wednesday) to obtain a first-hand account of the search for MH370.
Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein said Najib's working visit to the Pearce Air Force base was also to thank those involved in the operation. The Sun Daily