The spectre of missing Flight MH370 looms over a meeting of US and ASEAN defence ministers, as they discuss how to improve their response to natural disasters and emergencies.
The agenda for the ministers gathering on Wednesday in Hawaii - focused on bolstering co-operation for humanitarian assistance efforts - has taken on new significance in the wake of the aviation tragedy, officials said.
The often confused search for the missing Malaysia Airlines jet has sparked criticism of authorities in Kuala Lumpur and raised questions about the ability of regional governments to take joint action in an emergency.
Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel said that he expected his counterparts to look at possible lessons from the recovery effort, which has yet to find a sign of the plane since it went missing with 239 people on board on March 8.
"We'll go back and walk through this, what could have been done, maybe what should have been done," Hagel told reporters on Tuesday before landing in Honolulu.
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"We will get into some of this at our meeting over the next two days," he said.
Malaysia's Defence and Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein, who has served as the public face of the search effort, is attending the meeting, where he is expected to provide his counterparts an update on the search for the missing jet.
Hagel did not criticise Malaysia in his remarks, but the government's handling of the crisis has come under fire, especially by distraught relatives of the 153 Chinese nationals on board.
Singapore Foreign Minister K. Shanmugam last week called some of the criticism unfair and said Southeast nations lacked the military hardware to deploy in such a disaster, unlike the US or China.
Washington has two naval P-8 surveillance aircraft taking part in the massive search of a remote stretch of Indian Ocean southwest of Perth, where the plane is believed to have gone down. The hunt turned up nothing on Tuesday.
The international effort, which involves 10 aircraft, naval ships and now a British nuclear submarine, has illustrated the need to forge regular co-operation before a disaster strikes, said a senior US defence official.
