"We believe that using nuclear energy is every nation's right but we have obvious rights other than nuclear energy including security, peace and welfare," the 2003 Nobel peace prize winner told a news conference.

"We should not insist so hard on one right so that we lose all other rights in one go," she added.

The comments by Ebadi, a lawyer and human rights activist, represent an unusually explicit condemnation of the government's confrontational policy at a time of mounting tensions with the West.

She warned that the risk of military action over the Iranian nuclear programme -- which the United States has never ruled out -- was increasing.

"We can hear the evil sounds of war drums, however far away. We don't like it but there is probability of war.

"Let us not forget that in the past 30 years there has been a revolution and eight years of war (with Iraq). People are tired and want peace and quiet to lead their lives."

Ebadi called for the creation of a "national peace council" so people can say "what they want".

Such a movement could call on Iran to yield in the main sticking point in the standoff with the West -- its steadfast refusal to suspend uranium enrichment, a key phase of the nuclear fuel cycle.

"This council can condemn any threat from foreign forces and call on the Islamic republic to accept UN Security Council resolutions... in order to remove the threats to peace," said a statement by her group the Human Rights Defenders' Centre.

The UN Security Council has called on Iran three times to suspend enrichment and imposed two sets of sanctions for its defiance, but the government of Ahmadinejad has refused to budge.

Ebadi is the only prominent figure in Iran to have dared make such explicit criticism of the government's policies, although coded warnings have come from former presidents Mohammad Khatami and Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Ahmadinejad last week lashed out at "traitors" who he said were pressuring the government in the standoff over the nuclear programme.

Government spokesman Gholam Hossein Elham on Monday accused critics of seeking to "softly overthrow" the government and "preparing grounds for the infiltration of the enemy."

But Ebadi's concerns were openly echoed by a number of political activists and artists attending the conference organised by her rights group and titled "No to War."

Prominent dissident Ebrahim Yazdi warned that the United States was winning an international consensus to thwart Iran's nuclear drive and called on Iranians to rally in opposition to Ahmadinejad's stance.

"We can join the global anti-war movement, men and women take to the streets and by pressuring the government force it to be realistic and stop beating on war drums," said Yazdi, leader of Iran's outlawed National Freedom Movement.

"Uranium enrichment is not a national security issue for us," he said.

Ahmadinejad has repeatedly brushed off the threat of US military action as impossible and argued that in any case the security forces are ready to deal a crushing blow to any attacker.

But citing the beefed-up US military presence near Iran's borders and in the Gulf, veteran activist Ezatollah Sahabi warned against a "dangerous future" and a "massive attack that would lead to Iran's break-up."

Filmmaker Rakhshan Bani-Etemad, known for the social criticism in her movies, said: "It is our national duty to prevent the catastrophe. Victory in any field cannot compensate the losses of war."

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