Plot thickens over Israeli PM's secret trip

The plot thickened on Thursday over a secret trip by Israel's prime minister, as his office admitted it had misled about his whereabouts but stopped short of denying reports he had stolen away to Russia.

"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 Netanyahu had flown to Russia aboard a private plane on Monday to discuss Moscow's arms sales to arch-foes Syria and Iran.

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.



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.

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