The Saudi owners of the super-tanker Sirius Star were in negotiations Wednesday with the pirates who seized the vessel off the east African coast at the weekend, the Saudi foreign minister said in Rome.

`I know that the owners of the tanker, they are negotiating on the issue,` Prince Saud al-Faisal said when asked about media reports that the owners were in talks with the pirates over a possible ransom.

`We do not like to negotiate with either terrorists or hijackers, but the owners of the tankers are the final arbiters of what happens there,` Faisal told reporters in Rome.

`What we know is that we are going to join the task force that we will try eradicate this threat to international trade.`

The company which operates the Sirius Star has remained tight-lipped about the claims of negotiations.

`We cannot confirm, nor deny` reports of negotiations with the hijackers, said Mihir Sapur, the spokesman of Vela International, a subsidiary of Saudi oil giant Saudi Aramco.

Seized in the Indian Ocean some 500 miles (800 kilometres) off the African coast, the Sirius Star is now anchored at the Somali pirate lair of Harardhere, according to local officials.

The super-tanker was loaded to capacity with two million barrels of oil when it was seized along with its crew of 25 -- 19 from the Philippines, two from Britain, two from Poland, one Croatian and one Saudi.

It was the largest ship yet taken by Somali pirates and the attack furthest away from Somalia.