05/11/2009 Hezbollah on Thursday vehemently denied Israeli accusations that a huge shipment of arms seized by the Zionist entity was destined for the Islamic resistance group. "Hezbollah staunchly denies any link to the weapons that the Zionist enemy has seized from the Francop ship," the group said in a brief statement.
 
"At the same time Hezbollah denounces Israel's piracy in international waters," it added.
 
The Israeli military claimed it had seized the 137-metre (450-foot) Antigua-flagged vessel Francop before dawn on Wednesday around 100 nautical miles from the Israeli coast.
 
Iran and Syria, staunch allies of Hezbollah, have both rejected Israel's accusations about the ship's destination and direction of passage.
 
In a joint press conference Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki and his Syrian counterpart, Walid al-Mouallem, dismissed Israeli claims that a ship loaded with arms from Iran and headed for Syria had been intercepted in the Mediterranean Sea.
 
Walid al-Mouallem confirmed that the Israeli navy had seized a ship with Syrian cargo, but denied it was carrying arms; he also denied that the ship had been intercepted on its route from Iran to a Syrian port, saying the ship was headed in the opposite direction, on route to Iran to deliver Syrian-made goods for civilian consumption.
 
Israel, in fact, did not provide any proof of the alleged “hundreds of tons of arms bound for Hezbollah from Iran," as Israel's deputy naval commander, Rani Ben Yehuda, told the press.
 
At the joint press conference in Tehran, Syrian foreign minister Walid al-Mouallem commented the seizure of the ship by Israel stating that “unfortunately, some official pirates in the seas, sometimes in the name of the navy, sometimes in the name of inspection, obstruct trade movement between Syria and Iran”.
 
The ship itself, the “Francop”, was operated by the United Feeder Services, a Cyprus-based company that had taken the load in the Egyptian port of Damietta. An employee of the United Feeder Services said the ship had been bound from Damietta to Cyprus and from there to Lebanon and Turkey.