March 26 (Bloomberg) -- John McCain called for a new ``League of Democracies'' to advance western values and said he'd explore a free-trade agreement with the European Union in a speech outlining his foreign policy positions.

``We have to strengthen our global alliances as the core of a new global compact -- a League of Democracies -- that can harness the vast influence of the more than 100 democratic nations around the world to advance our values and defend our shared interests,'' McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, told the Los Angeles World Affairs Council.

Such democracies include the European Union as well as India, Japan, Australia, Brazil, South Korea, South Africa, Turkey and Israel, McCain said.

``We cannot build an enduring peace based on freedom by ourselves, and we do not want to,'' he said.

The Group of Eight leading industrial nations should be expanded to include Brazil and India, but exclude Russia, he said.

``Rather than tolerate Russia's nuclear blackmail or cyber attacks, western nations should make clear that the solidarity of NATO, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, is indivisible and that the organization's doors remain open to all democracies committed to the defense of freedom,'' McCain said.

Free Trade

Answering questions from the audience, the Arizona senator said a free-trade agreement with the European Union ``would be an interesting proposal.'' Later, flying to a fundraiser in Monterey, California, McCain told reporters such an agreement would be a ``massive undertaking,'' but he would begin discussions about it.

``I notice that some of their environmental standards and labor standards are higher than ours, not lower,'' he said.

McCain, who supported President George W. Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq, sought to dispel any perception that he would readily resort to war to further American policy.

``I detest war,'' he said. ``Not the valor with which it is fought, nor the nobility of the cause it serves, can glorify war.''

In war, ``The lives of a nation's finest patriots are sacrificed. Innocent people suffer and die. Commerce is disrupted; economies are damaged,'' he said.

Effect on Family

He recalled the effects of war on his own family. His late father and grandfather were both four-star Navy admirals.

``When I was 5 years old, a car pulled up in front of our house in New London, Connecticut, and a Navy officer rolled down the window and shouted at my father that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor,'' McCain said. ``My father immediately left for the submarine base where he was stationed. I rarely saw him again for four years.''

McCain, 71, was a U.S. Navy pilot who was held as a prisoner of war for five years in North Vietnam after his plane was shot down in 1967.

In his speech today, he hailed the decision to add forces in Iraq as a success and called for continuing the conflict there until al-Qaeda is defeated.

``Those who claim we should withdraw from Iraq in order to fight al-Qaeda more effectively elsewhere are making a dangerous mistake,'' he said. ``Whether they were there before is immaterial; al-Qaeda is in Iraq now.''

`Moral Responsibility'

In Iraq, McCain said the U.S. has ``incurred a moral responsibility.''

``It would be an unconscionable act of betrayal, a stain on our character as a great nation, if we were to walk away from the Iraqi people and consign them to the horrendous violence, ethnic cleansing and possibly genocide that would follow a reckless, irresponsible and premature withdrawal,'' he said.

McCain said early in the presidential campaign that U.S. troops might be in Iraq for 50 to 100 years, triggering suggestions by Democrats that there might be no end in sight for that conflict should McCain win the presidency.

``Many Americans are leery that he could lead us into war with Iran, and they wonder whether he's so aggressive that we'll have more conflicts,'' said Bob Blendon, a public opinion expert at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

After his off-the-cuff comments about a prolonged U.S. presence in Iraq, first made during a town hall meeting in New Hampshire, McCain has said repeatedly that such an arrangement would be no different from the postwar deployment of U.S. troops in Japan, Germany and South Korea.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said McCain's ``empty rhetoric can't change the fact that he has steadfastly stood with President Bush from day one and is now talking about keeping our troops in Iraq for 100 years.''

To contact the reporters on this story: Edwin Chen in Washington at echen32@bloomberg.net; Hans Nichols in Los Angeles at Hnichols2@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: March 26, 2008 15:47 EDT