KUALA LUMPUR, April 29 — The international team probing the disappearance of Flight 370 is not about pinpointing the faults, said Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein amid continued criticism of Malaysia’s handling of the crisis.

Instead, Acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin said the international investigation team is tasked “to evaluate, investigate and determine the actual cause of the incident” to prevent recurrences.

“I would like to stress that this investigation is not aimed at apportioning blame or liability with regards to the incident,” he said, when announcing that the team will be led by former Department of Civil Aviation (DCA) director-general Datuk Kok Soo Chon.

Malaysia has come under fire from international counterparts and the local opposition for the way the search mission was conducted.

Opposition leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim had insisted that Malaysia apologised to China for the way it had conducted search operations for the Malaysia Airlines plane that disappeared on March 8 with 239 people — 153 of whom were Chinese — on board.

DAP’s parliamentary leader Lim Kit Siang demanded for a royal commission of inquiry (RCI) or parliamentary select committee (PSC) to review if “the MH370 disaster” warrants new and additional budget for more military assets and a more efficient civil aviation system.

The team Kok is heading consists of experts from the United States National Transport Safety Board (NTSB), the United Kingdom’s Air Accident Investigation Branch (AAIB), Aircraft Accident Investigation Department (AAID) of the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), France’s Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses (BEA), the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) and representatives of ASEAN from Singapore and Indonesia.

The team is also made of representatives from plane’s maker Boeing, Rolls Royce and the British satellite telecommunications company Inmarsat.

The Beijing-bound plane carrying 239 people on board disappeared from civilian aviation radars less than an hour after departing the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) on March 8.

It was spotted on military radar, which showed it making a turn back west, shortly after. Satellite data showed the plane ended its flight over the Indian Ocean.

Despite several promising leads including pulse signals consistent with the wide-body aircraft’s black box pinger and round-the-clock efforts manned by sophisticated land and sea equipment in a hunt, there has been no sign of the missing jetliner.

Yesterday’s Australian news channel 7News reported yesterday, GeoResonance, a marine exploration company claimed that its research identified elements on the ocean floor in the Bay of Bengal, some 5,000km north of the current search location, consistent with material from a Boeing 777 plane.

However, taking caution from past false leads, Hishammuddin said today that the investigation team is working with its international partners to assess the credibility of the information