Just a day after France urged for wider European sanctions o Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that despite the difficulties encountered in its road to a nuclear based energy industry, the country he presides can’t be stopped from reaching its goal.

"I announce to the whole world that the Iranian nation has passed the difficult points (on its nuclear path)," Ahmadinejad said according to Iran's official news agency IRNA.

"And no power can stop this nation from making more and more (atomic) achievements," the president added.

Iranian diplomats said that about 3,000 centrifuge machines, enough to start refining usable amounts of nuclear fuel, were installed in the Middle East country, but in order to reach that brink all of them would need to run on full capacity, at the same time and for long periods of time.

However, the U.N. nuclear supervising director, in an interview for the Financial Times daily on Tuesday, said the Iranians were using the centrifuges to enrich uranium at only 10 per cent of their capacity, thus remaining far from having a nuclear weapon.

Western powers are suspicious that Teheran hides behind a quest for nuclear-generated electricity its real intentions to build atomic bombs.

French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner sent letters to his EU counterparts calling on them to find new financial sanctions in order to "increase the pressure" on Iran. Russia and China have held up tougher U.N. steps.

The French Minister said the sanctions he suggested could aim at the new companies mainly in the banking sector, and new individuals beyond those whose assets are frozen or those who face visa bans under current EU penalties.

"The clock is ticking," he wrote. "If we want to be able to obtain a negotiated solution with Iran, we cannot wait without reacting until we are faced with an Iranian fait accompli."

Another wave of sanctions against Iran could be agreed upon at the October 15 meeting held in Luxembourg. But, while France has Great Britain’s support, Italy and Germany are reluctant to adopt EU sanctions outside a U.N. framework.