French minister warns about alleged Airbus debris

By Gideon Swift | Published: June 5, 2009

France’s transportation minister said Friday that French forces have found no signs of the Airbus A330 airplane that vanished over the Atlantic and urged "extreme prudence" about suspected debris taken from the ocean.

Dominique Bussereau said he regretted that an announcement by Brazilian teams that they had recovered plane debris from Air France flight 447 turned out to be false.

The Brazilian air force announced Thursday afternoon that a helicopter plucked an airplane cargo pallet from the sea that came the Air France flight, but then said six hours later that it was not from the Airbus.

"French authorities have been saying for several days that we have to be extremely prudent," Bussereau told France’s RTL radio. "Our planes and naval ships have seen nothing."

Bussereau said the search must continue and stressed that the priority was finding the flight recorders. The plane went down Sunday night with 228 people on board in the world’s worst aviation disaster since 2001.

France’s defense minister and the Pentagon have said there were no signs that terrorism was involved. Brazil’s defense minister said the possibility was never considered.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, speaking Thursday in Rio de Janeiro where he attended a Mass honoring the crash victims, said experts had not found signs that would back up a "terrorism theory."

"But we cannot discard that for now," he told reporters. "Nothing leads us to believe that there was an explosion, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t one."

"All the paths are open and we will not give priority to a single premise because that would be immoral," he added.