Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbot on Monday voiced determination here in pressing ahead with the unprecedented task to locate missing Malaysian flight MH370 although no sign of the jet has been found more than three weeks after its disappearance.

In a visit to Pearce airbase 40 km north of Perth, the prime minister said that the ongoing search in the southern Indian Ocean is an extraordinarily difficult exercise as the joint forces are searching a vast area of ocean and are working on quite limited information.

"Nevertheless, the best brains in the world are applying themselves to the task and all of the technological mastery we have is being applied and brought to bear here today. If this mystery is solvable, we will solve it," Abbot told the media at the airbase.

He said Australia has regular military cooperation with the United States, New Zealand and Malaysia and that with China, Japan, South Korea was heartening which "demonstrated in this humanitarian cause that nations of the region has come together to work for the betterment of humanity and to work for resolving this extraordinary mystery and to bring peace and closure to the families of 239 victims onboard the aircraft."

Despite numerous sightings of floating objects from satellites and aircraft, none of the objects have yet been retrieved, but searchers need to recover debris in order to better understand what happened to the Boeing 777 which disappeared with 239 passengers and crew on board en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA), which oversees the search, announced Friday that the search area was being shifted about 1,100 km to the northeast on what was said to be a credible new lead developed from a refined analysis of satellite and radar monitoring of the aircraft before it vanished.

Australian navy ship, the Ocean Shield, equipped with a black box detector and an unmanned underwater drone, is due to leave later Monday.

Malaysia said the plane which disappeared less than an hour after taking off , was likely diverted deliberately.

Former Australian defense chief, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, will lead a new center in Perth to coordinate the international search effort, the Australian prime minister said.

The Joint Agency Coordination Center will work with key Australian government, state and international partners to provide a single contact point for families.

A total of 10 aircraft and 10 ships will be involved in Monday's search. New analysis of radar and satellite data concluded that the Boeing 777 travelled faster and for a shorter distance after vanishing from civilian radar screens on March 8.

The priority now is to "try to recover the black box, the recorder of the aircraft as soon as possible," said Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss, adding that the ATSB and the Australian safety bureau has a particular skill to interpret that data when it becomes available.

"There is lots of challenges ahead but the key task is to find whatever we can locate the aircraft so that we can move to the next stage of investigation."

There is a race against the time to find flight 370's black box, whose batteries are designed to last for one month.

Numerous objects have been spotted in the past several days since the new search area is defined but none has been confirmed as coming from missing flight MH370.


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