As Prime Minister Najib Razak continues his working tour of the US in conjunction with the UN General Assembly this week, he spoke to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour about handling the recent crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17.
During the Amanpour interview, Najib revealed with surprising candour how the Malaysian Federal Government had to deal with separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine in order to retrieve the bodies of MH17’s victims – and by Federal Government, he meant he had to speak to the rebels himself.
Calling the negotiations “unprecedented”, Najib told Amanour that national governments do not usually interact with non-government – let alone anti-government – entities in a foreign country, but stressed that in the MH17 case it was necessary in order to secure the return of victims’ remains and the downed jetliner’s black box recorder.
Working through back channels and without the full knowledge of the rest of the Government, Najib described how he personally was in back channel communications with Ukrainian separatist leaders while at the same time guiding a Malaysian team through numerous checkpoints on the phone, until the mission was accomplished.
He also intimated that he has a sense of what actually transpired in the events leading to the MH17 crash – that the plane was indeed shot down by a missile – but could not say exactly who was behind the shooting.
CNN has uploaded the seven-minute interview on YouTube; you can view the video below:
