Australia's Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss has confirmed a piece of plane wreckage that washed up on Reunion Island is from a Boeing 777 jet - the same aircraft type as missing Malaysia Airlines flight 370.
The deputy prime minister said on Wednesday that investigators could be in a position by the end of the week to announce whether the piece of wing belongs to MH370, which is thought to have crashed into the southern Indian Ocean.
Truss, who is also Australia's transport and infrastructure minister, said that French aviation officials have requested Australia's presence as they try to determine the exact origin of debris found on Reunion Island last week.
According to Truss, a representative from the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) has been "invited" to "take part in the examination of the Boeing 777 flaperon found on La Reunion."
"An investigator from the ATSB will join the French- and Malaysian-led international investigation team today to examine aircraft wreckage found on La Reunion," Truss said in a statement.
"Malaysian authorities, who are responsible for investigating the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, have determined that the aircraft component retrieved from La Reunion is a flaperon from a Boeing 777 aircraft.
"Work is being undertaken by the Malaysian and French authorities to establish whether the flaperon originated from MH370.
"Malaysian and French officials may be in a position to make a formal statement about the origin of the flaperon later this week. "
Truss said crucial ocean modeling devised by scientists at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization ( CSIRO) had now paved the way for further searches of the missing aircraft, and that a "defined" search area would be created in the southern Indian Ocean.
He said ocean currents and wind had likely dispersed the flaperon to Reunion.
"Australia's CSIRO drift modeling, commissioned by the ATSB, confirms that material from the current search area could have been carried to La Reunion, as well as other locations, as part of a progressive dispersal of floating debris through the action of ocean currents and wind," he said.
"For this reason, thorough and methodical search efforts will continue to be focused on the defined underwater search area, covering 120,000 square kilometers, in the southern Indian Ocean."
MH370 was a scheduled passenger flight bound for Beijing, China, from the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur on March 8, 2014. It disappeared from radars not long after take-off.
There were 239 people on board, many of whom were Chinese.
