BEIRUT -- Lebanon's top Shia Muslim cleric mocked on Friday a U.S. drive to spread democracy in the Muslim world, saying Muslims needed no lessons from Washington while it propped up governments that rule with "iron and fire".

In his weekly sermon, Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah criticized comments by U.S. President George W. Bush's national security advisor Condoleezza Rice that the United States wanted to be seen as "liberators".

"We say to this vindictive, arrogant, Zionist-thinking official that the Muslim world does not need America's moves for freedom and justice," Fadlallah, the former spiritual mentor to Lebanon's Hizbollah guerrilla group, told worshippers.

"It needs America to lift its pressure off Muslims applied through the agents it has employed to rule Muslim countries with iron and fire to protect American interests," he said referring to U.S. allies such as Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

In an interview with The Financial Times, Rice identified only Arab lightweights Bahrain, Qatar and Jordan as countries where "reformist elements" deserved U.S. support, Reuters reported.

"Rice says America wants to be considered a liberating force devoting itself to spreading democracy and freedom in the Muslim world, as though Muslims were minors in need of an American mentor to oversee their affairs and lead them to learn the lessons of freedom from America," Fadlallah said.