March 15 (Bloomberg) -- Iran's Interior Ministry said 65 percent of the nation's 43 million voters cast ballots in parliamentary elections yesterday.

The turnout was higher than in the previous election, when about 50 percent took part, Hassan Khanlou, the chief of the ministry's election committee, told the state-run Iranian Students News Agency in Tehran.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called on Iranians to vote en- masse for his United Principlist Front, which is seeking to ward off challenges from a breakaway conservative group and the Reformists' Coalition of former President Mohammad Khatami.

Khatami's Reformists contested less than half of the seats in parliament after hundreds of their candidates were barred by the Guardian Council, a body of religious clerics and jurists that oversees the legislature.

Ahmadinejad's party and the Broad Principlist Coalition, a rival group formed earlier this year by former chief nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani, may win a combined 70 percent of the 290 seats in the assembly, Agence France-Presse reported, citing early results from several smaller cities.

To contact the reporter on this story: Mark Bentley in Tehran at mbentley3@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: March 15, 2008 04:32 EDT