KUALA LUMPUR, April 23 — Malaysia has proposed a formal accord to Australia that will cover critical areas in the on-going Flight MH370 crisis in the event the wreckage is discovered.

These include the custody of the recovered debris and bodies of the 239 people on board the missing Malaysia Airlines plane, as well as a review of the use of search assets currently being deployed to look for the plane in the southern Indian Ocean.

According to a report on CNN.com today, Canberra is now poring over Putrajaya’s proposed deal that will help clarify the grey areas surrounding the multi-national effort spearheaded by Australia.

“The Australian government is currently considering that proposal from the Malaysians and will respond as quickly as possible,” Martin Dolan, chief commissioner of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, told CNN.

“We hope to have resolved this within the next week.”

The proposal is an expansion of an earlier deal between the two governments from before that placed Australia in charge of the search for the wreckage in the area off the country’s west coast.

But with increasing signs that searchers may finally be closing in on the elusive plane, the additional refinements were necessary to lay down the rules on the critical next phases of recovery.

“There’s communication at all levels from Prime Minister to Prime Minister down, including (between me) and my Malaysian counterpart,” Dolan added in the report.

Chinese officials have also been involved in the discussions, he said.

Questions remain over who will take charge of the so-called “black boxes” if they are eventually recovered, but Malaysia Acting Transport Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein previously insisted that this was not of concern.

He added that the primary concern was to discover the facts about what happened aboard the plane that went missing on March 8.

An underwater search of the area that was pinpointed following the detection of acoustic signals consistent with the flight data and cockpit voice recorders — the so-called “black boxes” — is nearly complete, but remains fruitless despite ten missions so far.

The Bluefin-21 autonomous submersible is diving within a 10-kilometer radius of an area where signals were detected on April 8.

No further signals have since been detected, with the Joint Agency Coordination Centre, which is leading the search, concluding that the batteries of the black boxes’ emergency locaters were exhausted.

Earlier today, Canberra expressed its commitment to continue the search that is already the most expensive recovery operation in history.

“There will be some issues of costs into the future but this is not about costs,” Defence Minister David Johnston told reporters in Canberra.