Searches in Indonesia's South and West Sulawesi provinces for the Adam Air passenger plane that has been missing since last Monday have still not yielded any positive results, an Air Force official said Thursday.

 

The searches would therefore be shifted to areas south of Manado in North Sulawesi province, Antara news agency quoted Air Commodore Eddy Suyanto, who is also coordinator of the search and rescue mission, as saying in Makassar, capital of South Sulawesi province.

 

He said a number of naval vessels and air force aircraft as well as police planes and a plane from the Singapore air force had been deployed to find the missing plane or what was left of it but none of them had spotted anything worth reporting. "If the plane sank in the sea we will rely on the naval vessels to find it," he said.

 

He said the searches would be resumed on Friday with the main focus on areas south of Manado in North Sulawesi.

 

One of the coordinators at the National Search and Rescue Agency (Basarnas), Karnoyudho, meanwhile said the search efforts would be stopped if the plane could not be found in seven days' time.

 

He said however they would be resumed again if new clues were found.

 

The Boeing 737-400 with 96 passengers and six crews on board which went missing on a flight from Surabaya to Manado on Monday afternoon was reported still air worthy.

 

(Xinhua News Agency January 5, 2007)