Two months after bolting the GOP for the Reform Party nomination, embracing the endorsement of a liberal veteran activist and saying he would accept homosexuals into his campaign, conservative commentator Pat Buchanan now says he wants the United States to adopt a kinder, gentler policy toward the same rogue nations he sought to sanction four years ago.

That was the Republican Buchanan, the one who first became widely known to voters with his brash speech at the 1992 GOP convention in which he declared a cultural war on liberalism.

It was the same Buchanan who rejected homosexuality, supported President Clinton's sanctions policy and defeated front-runner Bob Dole in the lead-off New Hampshire GOP primary in 1996.

Now making his third White House bid as a staunch abortion opponent, Buchanan has dramatically changed his political landscape. This time he's running for president on the Reform ticket, convinced that the GOP is becoming soft on abortion.

"It was one of the wisest decisions I've made in my lifetime," Buchanan said.

He has accepted the endorsement of veteran liberal activist Lenora Fulani and has said he would accept campaign help from homosexuals -- as long as they support his agenda and do not lead scandalous lives.

In a speech last week, Buchanan reversed himself on foreign policy, announcing that he now opposes sanctions against Iran, Iraq, Cuba and other nations. The position distinguishes him from every other presidential candidate.

"Our sanctions are sowing seeds of hatred that will one day flower in acts of terrorism against us, years after these sanctions expire," Buchanan told an audience at the private Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"Among my first acts as president will be to declare an end to all sanctions ... against Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Myanmar, Sudan and all the other targeted nations of U.S. sanctions policy," he said in the speech Thursday.

Buchanan later acknowledged to reporters that the speech amounted to a reversal. In 1996, he supported Clinton's strengthened sanctions against Havana in response to Cuba's shooting down of two civilian U.S. planes.

He also proposed in his 1996 campaign that sanctions be placed on countries that trade unfairly with the United States, and he attacked foreign critics of U.S. sanctions on Libya.

The twists and turns of Buchanan's politics sparked ridicule from Trump's camp and the Reform Party faction loyal to Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura.

"Buchanan's an opportunist in search of $12.5 million" in federal matching funds that the Reform Party nominee will receive, said Minnesota party chairman Rick McCluhan.

"He's become a dangerous left winger," quipped Roger Stone, Trump's political strategist. "I know of no one in the Reform Party who is pro-Fidel Castro or pro-Moammar Gadhafi."

Buchanan said his new opposition to sanctions is pro-children, shaped in part by the findings of former U.N. coordinator Denis Halliday.

Sanctions "may fairly be called America's silent weapon of mass destruction, whose victims are almost always the weak, the sick, the women and the young," Buchanan said in his speech. "Can a nation that declares piously it will never stoop to assassinating tyrants, but wields a sanctions sword that slaughters children, truly call itself 'the home of the brave'?"

As for teaming up with Fulani, Buchanan said "Lenora Fulani endorsed me."

"Anyone who wants to endorse me is welcome in my campaign," he added.

That includes homosexuals, "as long as the lives they live were not scandalous," he said. Buchanan took issue, however, with the notion that such a posture is a change for him. He said he would not accept help from anyone who supports a gay rights agenda.

And he predicted that his former Republican colleagues and anyone else who ridicules him will find him one of the few candidates still standing in March, after the early primary states have voted.