"Everybody has understood that Iran is the number one power in the world," Ahmadinejad said in a speech to families who lost loved ones in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.

"Today the name of Iran means a firm punch in the teeth of the powerful and it puts them in their place," added Ahmadinejad, who on Sunday will become the first president of the Islamic republic to visit neighbouring Iraq.

Ahmadinejad's comments come amid renewed Western efforts on the UN Security Council to agree a third package of sanctions against Tehran over its refusal to suspend sensitive nuclear activities.

They also came a day after former top nuclear negotiator Hassan Rowhani launched an unprecedented attack on Ahmadinejad's foreign policy, accusing him of using "coarse slogans and grandstanding".

"You can see how some people here... try to materialise the plans of the enemies and by showing that Iran is small and the enemy is big," seethed Ahmadinejad.

"These are the people who put the enemies of humanity in the place of God," said the deeply religious president.

Ahmadinejad once again insisted that Iran was winning the standoff over its atomic programme, which the West fears could be used to make nuclear weapons but Iran says is peaceful.

"The Iranian nation is on the verge of the final nuclear victory and no power can stop this nation."

"The enemies of the nation and bullying powers do not dare to admit that this nation has won in the nuclear field."

Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who this week congratulated Ahmadinejad for his role in Iran's nuclear case, said that Islamic countries do not need US approval to achieve great works.

Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki meanwhile sent a letter to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon criticising what he described as "baseless accusations" by UN Security Council members about the Iranian nuclear drive, the official IRNA news agency reported.

Rowhani's speech on Wednesday was extraordinary for its explicit criticism of the president's policies and for its attack on his inflammatory anti-Israel rhetoric, which has once again provoked Western condemnation.

While Ahmadinejad did not mention Rowhani by name, his address is likely to be seen as a clear message to his opponents that such criticism of his rhetoric is not welcome.

Ahmadinejad also told the families of the "martyrs" of the war that their loss was not in vain as the message of the Islamic revolution of 1979 that ousted the pro-US shah was spreading all over the world.

"Today the message of your revolution is being heard in South America, East Asia, in the heart of Europe and even in the United States itself," he said.

Ahmadinejad said he talked with people everywhere he travelled in the world and "it is like I am in district 17 in Tehran", referring to the low-income area in the south of the Iranian capital where he was giving his speech.

"I have been to most parts of the world. I read the news every day. Every day I speak to different figures from different countries and have meetings with them," he commented.

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