Geopolitical Rivalries Color an Extraordinary Joint Effort to Find Missing Jet - NYTimes.com

" For example, Indian officials were reluctant to discuss radar data from the Bay of Bengal, along one of the plane’s most likely paths. That turned out to be because there was not much data — the area was a weak spot in the country’s radar coverage. In an interview, a senior Indian military official said India did not keep “heavy surveillance” capabilities there because it was not a tense area, unlike the country’s northern border with Pakistan.

Some of the sharpest tensions have risen between China and Malaysia. Chinese officials have denounced Malaysia for its reluctance to share information about the search. Most of the 239 people on board the flight are Chinese.

At the same time, China has also been unwilling to share with other nations its raw military radar data, even it might have helped investigators pin down whether the plane had flown north, toward Central Asia. Instead, China, like several other countries, simply told Malaysian officials that its radars had not spotted the plane.

“They won’t share radar data,” said one Western official here who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicate diplomatic issues. “They’ve told us and everybody else, ‘We didn’t see it, period.’ They’re not willing to share the data.”

One possible explanation is that China wants to not only hide its technological capabilities, but also the limits of that technology, even as it hasgrown bolder in asserting itself as a military power, analysts say."