BOSTON - Lifting sanctions against Iran and Iraq and opening the Alaskan wilderness to oil drilling could help stave off future energy crises, Reform Party presidential hopeful Patrick Buchanan said Friday.

Buchanan, speaking before a crowd of about 300 students at Boston University, also urged the development of more nuclear power plants and said the United States should withhold military help from Persian Gulf allies unless crude prices fall to $20 a barrel.

"Sell (Iran and Iraq) all the oil-drilling equipment they wish to buy and let them sell all the oil they want on the world market," Buchanan said. "None of these Gulf regimes is worth another war."

The former Republican presidential candidate also weighed in on the case of 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez, who has been at the center of an international custody dispute since he was rescued last November while clinging to an inner tube in the Atlantic after a shipwreck that claimed the life of his mother.

Buchanan said Vice President Al Gore was right to break with the Clinton administration and urge Congress to grant the Cuban boy and his family permanent resident status in the United States.

"It's been said that even a blind old sow will stumble across an acorn," Buchanan said, referring to Gore's announcement Thursday. "I think Al Gore is dead right."

Buchanan unveiled his energy plan three days after the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed, against objections from Iran, to increase production by 1.7 million barrels a day to fill a 2-million-barrel-a-day shortfall that has tripled crude prices over the last 14 months.

Within a day of the OPEC deal, spot prices for oil dropped 64 cents to $26.45 a barrel. Prices reached a high of $34 earlier this month.

Buchanan blamed the problem on a "global price-rigging conspiracy."

"There is more at stake here than higher heating bills or enraged SUV drivers," he said. "If America fails to develop a national policy of energy independence, we will one day be at the mercy of this OPEC cartel."

Middle East foreign policy expert Anthony Cordesman said the plan to lift sanctions on Iran and Iraq is simplistic since some sanctions were imposed by the United Nations. Also, he said, such a move has implications for the proliferation of nuclear and biological weapons.

"In essence, (Buchanan has) said they can import anything they want whether it can be used as a weapon or not," Cordesman said.

Buchanan used the speech to knock Gore and Republican presidential candidate George Bush as "kooky" and "naive."

Boston University sophomore Jennifer Catola said Buchanan's views were one-sided.

"Whether or not we produce all (the) oil in the United States, there's no way it's going to be efficient," Catola said. "It will still be more price efficient to buy it from another country."

Buchanan also proposed the United States:

-Put a $1,000 tariff on all cars assembled in Mexico;

-Suspend all foreign aid, world Bank and IMF loans to governments that support "the OPEC cartel's looting of America."

-Pump oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and suspend for six months the 18-cents-per-gallon gas tax "and restock the reserve with cheaper oil as the price falls."

-Set a floor under oil prices so that when OPEC "conspires to flood the world market to kill competition, an import fee kicks in to support domestic prices."

"We should play hardball with those who play hardball with us," Buchanan said.