Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said Monday that Tehran would continue talks with the Syrian opposition following a preliminary meeting at the weekend.

"We had 45 (minutes) to an hour discussion which was very fruitful... and we committed ourselves to continue this discussion," Salehi told a foreign-policy think tank in Berlin after meeting Syrian opposition leader Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib at a security conference in the southern German city of Munich.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Monday he is ready "to be the first man in space" under Iran's ambitious program which aims to send a human being into orbit by 2020.

"Our youth are determined to send a man into space within the next four, five years and I'm sure that will happen," he said during a ceremony in Tehran where two new Iranian-made satellites were unveiled, according to ISNA news agency.

Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat praised on Monday Syrian National Coalition chief Moaz al-Khatib's “bold” proposal to hold dialogue with the Syrian regime.

He said in his weekly editorial to the PSP-affiliated al-Anbaa website: “He may have an impossible mission on his hands, but no other alternatives to end the Syrian crisis, based on the Geneva agreement, are available.”

Israel will regret its latest "aggression against Syria", Iran's security chief Saeed Jalili told reporters during a visit to Damascus on Monday.

"Just like it regretted all its wars... the Zionist entity will regret its aggression against Syria," Jalili, head of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, said a day after Israel implicitly confirmed it staged an air strike near Damascus last week.

Tehran has denied that a ship loaded with rockets and explosives intercepted by Yemen's coast guard originated from Iran as claimed by Yemeni officials, local media reported on Monday.

The reports cited an unnamed source in the foreign ministry as saying that Tehran "strongly denies claims" by Yemen that the vessel came from Iran and was loaded with arms destined for Shiite rebels in Sunni-majority Yemen.

The head of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, accused by Israel of receiving arms which transit through Sudan, has met President Omar al-Bashir in Khartoum, official media reported.

Bashir discussed "issues of mutual concern" with Ramadan Abdullah Shallah during talks on Sunday at the presidential guest house, the state SUNA news agency said. It gave no further details.

Iran's installation of new equipment at its Natanz nuclear plant will speed up enrichment efforts and complicate plans to prevent Tehran from building a weapons capability, Israel said on Sunday.

Speaking just before the formal start of talks to build Israel's new ruling coalition, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the most important mission which will face the new government was preventing a nuclear Iran.

Israel on Sunday implicitly confirmed it staged an air strike on Syria this week, as President Bashar Assad accused the Jewish state of trying to "destabilize" the strife-torn country.

Four days after an air raid which Damascus said targeted a military complex near the capital, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak spoke to reporters in Munich but refrained from directly confirming that Israel staged the strike.

Iran announces Iran announced on Sunday fresh talks with world powers on its nuclear drive and said it was open to an offer from arch-foe the United States for two-way discussions if Washington's intention was "authentic".

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said the six world powers planned to resume talks in Kazakhstan on February 25 and he insisted Iran had never pulled back from the negotiations.

A ship loaded with rockets and explosives which Yemen said it had intercepted last month came from Iran and the arms were destined for Shiite rebels, a security official said on Sunday.

"The boat was heading towards the (Red Sea) port of Al-Mukha" and the arms "were destined for the Huthi rebels in Saada," the northern stronghold of the Shiite fighters, the Yemeni security official told AFP.