Cost shares still up in air for jet hunt

CANBERRA, Australia — Countries searching for a missing Malaysian plane have yet to agree on how to share costs, an Australian search leader said Tuesday.

Malaysian officials were in the Australian capital Canberra to discuss the next phase of the search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which is thought to have crashed in the southern Indian Ocean on March 8 with 239 people on board.

Malaysia is in charge of the search because the Boeing 777 is registered there. But Australia is coordinating the search because it is the closest country to where the plane is thought to have crashed. Most of the passengers were Chinese, and their government is active in the search.

“We’re still to negotiate the burden-sharing with, for example, Malaysia,” Australia’s Joint Agency Coordination Center head Angus Houston told Australian Broadcasting Corp. television.

A seabed search of the most likely crash site, using an unmanned, remote-controlled submarine, ended last month without finding any trace of the plane.

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