Tehran - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad vowed Friday to keep supporting the Palestinian militant group Hamas until the collapse of Israel.

The news network Khabar quoted Ahmadinejad as saying in a phone conversation with Hamas leader and deposed Palestinian prime minister Ismail Haniya that Iran considered supporting the Palestinians its religious and national duty and would stay beside the Palestinian nation "until the big victory feast which is collapse of the Zionist

regime."

The Iranian president said that the continued Hamas resistance against Israel and the group's achievements would always be "a source of pride for all Muslims."

Tehran- A strong earthquake on Wednesday jolted the southern Iranian province

Tehran  - The legal commission of the Iranian parliament has limited the rights of men to polygamy but the new bill has still to be approved by the country's legislative power, ISNA news agency reported Monday.

The spokesman of the parliamentary legal commission said that the new law would only allow men to marry a second wife after getting the approval of the first wife.

Amin-Hossein Rahimi added that exceptions would only be made if the first wife left the marriage or was sentenced to a long prison term.

Under the previous law, a man could marry a second wife without the approval of his first wife.

Tehran  - Tehran on Friday rejected remarks by President Nicolas Sarkozy on Iran's nuclear weapons being a threat to the region and the whole world.

"Nuclear weapons have no place in Iran's defence doctrine," foreign ministry spokesman Hassan Ghashghavi was quoted by Fars news agency as saying.

Sarkozy on Thursday asked his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad for support in opposing Iran's controversial nuclear programme.

Tehran - Iran has 4,000 operational centrifuges at the uranium enrichment plant in Natanz in central Iran, deputy foreign minister Alireza Sheikh-Attar said Friday.

Official news agency IRNA quoted the minister as saying that almost 4,000 centrifuges were operating in Natanz and 3,000 more were in the stage of installation.

The remarks by Sheikh-Attar, who according to IRNA is to become Iran's next ambassador to Germany, contradict last month's claims by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that out of the 6,000 new centrifuges, 5,000 have become operational.