ONG BEACH, Calif. - Winding up what he called ''the last red-meat convention in America,'' Patrick J. Buchanan yesterday accepted one of the Reform Party's disputed presidential nominations with a fiery attack on the two major parties as well as several international organizations.
But at a separate convention a block away, Buchanan's opponents renewed their vow to block him from the Reform Party's place on the November ballot, charging that the former Republican candidate had stolen a mail-in ''primary'' by encouraging 500,000 GOP voters to take part in the Reform Party process.
The anti-Buchanan faction formally nominated John Hagelin to be its presidential nominee. Hagelin asked the group to accept Nat Goldhaber, a California businessman, as his running mate.
On Friday, Buchanan chose Ezola Foster, a black California educator, as his running mate.
Buchanan and Hagelin are expected to continue their battle for legitimacy this week before the Federal Election Commission in a feud over $12.6 million in campaign funds due to the Reform Party. The dispute will probably end up in federal court, both sides say.
As the two factions completed their activities here, they ended a week that appears destined to become a bizarre footnote in American political history. The movement that Perot started in 1992 by winning 19 percent of the vote in the presidential election - a constituency that threatened the two-party system - spun out of control in Long Beach.
Perot's party, which originally rallied under the banner ''United We Stand,'' lay in divided ruins yesterday after Buchanan led his followers to the right while the remnants of Perot's group cast their fortunes with Hagelin, a little-known physicist from Iowa.
Leaders of the Perot faction said they intended to rebuild the party. ''I will be absolutely ruthless not to allow this party to be pulled down into the hell of internal divison ever again,'' said Jim Mangia, chairman of the group.
Russell Verney, a former national chairman of the Reform Party and a close associate of Perot's, said the focus should now be on building the party on the state level with local candidates rather than attempting to compete in a presidential election.
But after losing bids for the Republican presidential nomination in 1992 and 1996, Buchanan seized the moment as a chance to lead a party into a general election campaign.
In remarks prepared for delivery last night, Buchanan assailed both the Republicans and Democrats for conspiring ''to kill our beloved republic.''
''The Democratic Party will never reform education because it is held hostage by the teachers' unions,'' he said. ''Republicans will never shut down the IMF [International Monetary Fund] because if they did, the corporate lobbyists would cut off their room, board, tuition, beer, and gas money.''
Buchanan also promised to ''lead this country out of the WTO [World Trade Organization], out of the IMF, and I will personally tell [United Nations Secretary General] Kofi Annan: Your UN lease has run out. You will be moving out of the United States, and if you are not gone by year's end, I will send you 10,000 Marines to help you pack your bags.
''It is time to pick up the pitchforks and go down and clean out the pigpen,'' declared Buchanan.
