'Malaysian govt hiding crucial information on plane'

Accusing Malaysian government of hiding crucial information on the crashed jet, opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim has demanded an international committee to take over the probe that has made no headway.
Anwar said it was "clearly baffling" that the Malaysian air force had "remained silent" even after detecting the Beijing-bound Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 as it crossed the country's mainland after mysteriously deviating from its regular path, after taking off from here on March 8.
He claimed it "should take three minutes under SOP (standard operating procedure) for the air force planes to go. And there was no response".
"Unfortunately the manner in which this was handled after the first few days was clearly suspect.

"One fact remains. Clearly information critical to our understanding is deemed missing. I believe the government knows more than us," he told Britain's Daily Telegraph.
Anwar, who personally knew the pilot of the jet Captain Zahari Ahmad Shah, called for an international committee to take over the Malaysia-led operation because "the integrity of the whole nation is at stake".

He said that he had authorised the installation of "one of the most sophisticated radar" systems in the world, based near the South China Sea and covering Malaysia's mainland and east and west coastlines, when he was the country's finance minister in 1994.

Malaysia's handling of the crisis has been widely criticised, especially by the relatives of the 227 passengers aboard the ill-fated Boeing 777-200.
Australia has been coordinating the search for possible wreckage in the Indian Ocean as hope has faded for recovering the plane's black box before its batteries start to fail - which could be as early as Monday.
Anwar said it was "at the least, incompetence" on the part of the Malaysian government that it is still not known what happened to the plane, but there was also a deliberate "intention to suppress key information".
Malaysia's military had said its radar had picked up an unidentified object moving toward the Indian Ocean, but did not react as it was not considered hostile.

The decision of not responding swiftly following the detection has been criticised as valuable time was lost in tracking the ailiner's movement.
The opposition leader was attempting to exploit the tragedy for political gain, the paper cited a source close to the Malaysian government as saying.
Last week, Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein insisted that the government was "not hiding anything.