Iran president says Israel illegitimate, won't last

TEHRAN, Oct 19 (Reuters) Iran's president, who has called for Israel's destruction, said today the Jewish state was ''illegitimate'' and could not survive.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said last year that Israel should be ''wiped of the map'', echoing comments by the late founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. That remark caused an outcry in the West and he has not since repeated it.

But he regularly criticises Israel, a state which Iran has not recognised since the Islamic revolution in 1979, and today launched a new broadside.

''Our nation has previously announced that this regime is illegitimate from its foundation. It is fabricated. It has been imposed on the nations of the region and it cannot survive,'' he said in televised speech at a rally near Tehran.

Ahmadinejad was speaking before Qods Day (Jerusalem Day), the last Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan when Iranians show support for the Palestinians.

''The existence of this regime (Israel) is the root of many problems of mankind today,'' the president said, adding that Israel had been ''founded by the major powers in the heart of the Islamic world''.

Ahmadinejad's comments, which have included describing as a ''myth'' the Holocaust in which 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis, have been condemned in Israel and the West.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in May Iran's leaders had turned Israel ''into a target for annihilation''.

Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz said in April Iran's nuclear programme was the biggest threat to Jews since the Holocaust.

Iran is accused by the West of seeking to develop nuclear weapons, despite Tehran's insistence that it only wants to to make nuclear fuel to generate electricity.

Ahmadinejad said in August Iran was not a threat to any country, ''not even to the Zionist regime'' -- a term Iranian officials use for Israel.

REUTERS PB RN1959