LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate John McCain, looking to chart an independent course on U.S. foreign policy, called on Wednesday for a more vigorous international diplomacy and a new effort to rebuild frayed relations with allies.

Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain speaks at the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, March 26, 2008. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni

Distancing himself from the sometimes unilateral diplomatic approach of President George W. Bush, McCain said the United States needs to live up to its responsibilities as a world leader and become a “model citizen” in the global community.

“The United States cannot lead by virtue of its power alone,” the Arizona senator, back from a trip to Iraq, the Middle East and Europe, said in a speech to the World Affairs Council in California.

“Our great power does not mean we can do whatever we want whenever we want, nor should we assume we have all the wisdom and knowledge necessary to succeed. We need to listen to the views and respect the collective will of our democratic allies,” McCain said.

McCain, who has been criticized by Democrats for hewing too closely to the policies of Bush, his fellow Republican, acknowledged the damaged U.S. image around the globe after five years of the Iraq war.

“Leadership in today’s world means accepting and fulfilling our responsibilities as a great nation. One of those responsibilities is to be a good and reliable ally to our fellow democracies,” he said.

McCain slammed both of the two Democrats seeking to become their party’s candidate in the November election, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, for advocating quick withdrawals from Iraq.

He also signaled he would have a more hands-on approach than Bush in working for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

“I would devote every effort, including personal deep engagement and involvement in the Palestinian-Israeli peace process,” McCain said in response to a question after the speech. “It is too important ... for us not to give it the highest priority.”

‘WE CAN’T TORTURE’

McCain restated his opposition to torture and said the United States should close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where it holds terrorism suspects.

“America must be a model citizen if we want others to look to us as a model,” he said. “How we behave at home affects how we are perceived abroad. We can’t torture or treat inhumanely suspected terrorists we have captured.”

The Bush administration has admitted using waterboarding -- a simulated drowning technique widely regarded as torture -- in some instances.

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McCain has clinched the Republican nomination, while Clinton and Obama are still battling one another on the Democratic side, and the speech in Los Angeles was his second major policy address in two days after one on Tuesday on the U.S. housing crisis.

Obama, back on the campaign trail after two days of vacation, criticized McCain for not offering specific approaches to easing turmoil in housing markets. McCain had said he was open to a variety of approaches.

“He said that the best way to address the fact that millions of Americans are losing their homes is to just sit back and watch it happen,” Obama said in Greensboro, North Carolina.

“We have been down this road before. It’s the road that George Bush has taken over the last eight years,” he said.

McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said Obama’s “blatant mischaracterizations aren’t the new politics he’s promised America, they’re the old attack and smear tactics that Americans are tired of.”

McCain rebuked Obama, an Illinois senator, and Clinton, a New York senator, for supporting relatively quick withdrawals of troops from Iraq.

“We have incurred a moral responsibility in Iraq,” he said. “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.”

(Additional reporting by Matthew Bigg, writing by John Whitesides; editing by Patricia Zengerle)