ASHINGTON - Patrick J. Buchanan yesterday reaffirmed foreign policy views criticized by other Republican presidential candidates, and offered terms to the GOP for ending his dalliance with the Reform Party: Nominate him.
Buchanan also chastised members of both parties - ''especially the Republicans'' - for being ''braying donkeys of interventionism.'' He said the United States should apologize to Russia for the ''double-cross'' of expanding NATO into central Europe.
Further, he said, the West today is making the same mistakes in Europe that he wrote about in a new book, ''A Republic, Not an Empire.''
''We are repeating the errors that led to World War II, and for heaven's sake, stop it before World War III,'' Buchanan said on ''Fox News Sunday.''
Buchanan's book entered the national political debate last week because of its questions about the United States' entry into World War II against Nazi Germany. It said Adolf Hitler's Third Reich was no threat to the United States after 1940, and Allied guarantees to Poland brought war to the continent and gave the Soviet Union's communist government two extra years to prepare for Germany's invasion.
Three campaign rivals, John McCain, Elizabeth Dole, and Steve Forbes, have questioned Buchanan's writings in highly critical terms. McCain said Republicans should welcome Buchanan's departure from the party.
Yesterday, Buchanan said he needs at least three weeks before deciding. ''I'm still a candidate for the Republican nomination, but I'm clearly thinking about going for the Reform Party nomination,'' he said.
Asked how the Republicans could keep him in the GOP, Buchanan said with a laugh: ''They could offer me the nomination.''
On Friday, George W. Bush said in an interview that he wants Buchanan to remain Republican, although he disagreed with his opinion that the German threat to the United States ended after Hitler lost the Battle of Britain in 1940.
A GOP senator, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, said the Republicans are paying too much attention to Buchanan. ''I think if we ignored Pat,'' he said, ''that would be the best course.''
Buchanan said the book, which he described on CNN's ''Late Edition'' as ''a boring, scholarly work on foreign policy,'' was meant to sound an alarm to the country.
''We need to reduce our commitments to fight in all these ridiculous little places around the world. We need to rebuild the military to where it was when Ronald Reagan had it,'' he said on Fox.
Then, he said, ''we need to let nations know clearly, if you fool with the United States, you have had it.''
He said expanding NATO to include Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary was a mistake. It violated commitments, made as late as the Bush administration, that NATO would not extend to Eastern Europe if Russia left the region.
''We double-crossed the Russians,'' Buchanan said.
As president, Buchanan said, he would offer Russia a deal: promise to leave alone the Baltic states Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, and NATO will not expand farther eastward.
