The plot thickened yesterday over a secret trip by Israel's Prime Minister, as his office admitted it had misled the public about his whereabouts but did not deny reports he had stolen away to Russia to discuss arms sales to Iran.
"The Prime Minister was busy with a confidential and classified activity," Benjamin Netanyahu's office said in a statement.
"Having had the best intentions, his military attache... acted to defend that activity and did this through an announcement to the media" that said he had spent the day at a security facility in Israel, it said.
But the statement did not deny media reports that Mr Netanyahu had flown to Russia aboard a private plane on Monday to discuss Moscow's arms sales to arch-foes Syria and Iran, whose controversial nuclear drive has Israel worried.
In Moscow, the Russian authorities said that the Israeli Premier had met neither his counterpart Vladimir Putin nor President Dmitry Medvedev, but did not explicitly deny the trip itself. But the respected Kommersant daily yesterday said a senior Kremlin source confirmed to it that Mr Netanyahu did indeed visit the Russian capital.
The mystery around the Prime Minister's day-long disappearance from public view is unfolding alongside another - that the Arctic Sea cargo ship supposedly seized by pirates and later recovered by Russia was secretly carrying S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems bound for Iran. Russia has denied that the ship was carrying S-300s and Russian investigators have announced that their inspection of the vessel turned up only its official cargo of timber.
The Arctic Sea, a Maltese-flagged vessel with a Russian crew, was hijacked near Sweden in late July before being recovered by the Russian navy in the Atlantic Ocean several weeks later. Meanwhile, the Finnish company operating the cargo vessel Arctic Sea, said yesterday it hoped Russian investigators would return the ship and its cargo soon.
The Russian prosecutor's office told Russian news agency Interfax yesterday that the ship would be handed over to Maltese authorities in Las Palmas, in Spain's Canary Islands, once the investigation was completed.