CONCORD, N.H. (AP) – Despite Mideast turmoil and President Bush’s low approval ratings, Republicans can win in November by focusing on core issues that unite them, possible presidential candidate George Pataki said Friday.

“If we focus on what separates us, I think we can have a successful November,” Pataki said after an appearance in Keene.

He said Republicans nearly unanimously agree on core issues such as limiting spending and the size of government.

Pataki said the race to succeed him after 12 years as governor of New York illustrates that there are differences between the parties.

Last month, Democratic front-runner Eliot Spitzer vowed “to overturn a court decision that said that marriage is between a man and a woman,” Pataki noted. “I think Republicans firmly believe that is the case. There are issues that divide us.”

The Republican and conservative candidate in New York supports the decision.

Pataki, whose popularity is low at home and who chose not to seek re-election, hasn’t said whether he will run for president.

If he does, many believe he will be handicapped in primaries by positions that are liberal for his party – for keeping abortion legal, for gay rights and for gun control, for example.

But Pataki said voters of all political stripes “are looking for less partisanship, less polarizing and a greater sense of unity and common purpose.” He said audiences in New Hampshire, Iowa and other early voting states in 2008 are demonstrating that.

Pataki spoke as the war between Israel and Hezbollah raged and one day after two top U.S. generals acknowledged the danger that Iraq will descend into civil war. He answered a question about how he would gauge progress to halt sectarian violence in Iraq by lauding that country’s unity government and deploring the lack of international help to shore it up.

“It is extraordinary that Iraq has successfully carried off two elections and put in place a truly democratically elected government that is recognized as such by the global community,” he said.

But, he said, “it shouldn’t just be the United States, along with a few close allies like Great Britain, that have to bear the burden of defending that democratically elected government. I think we should look to the international community and look to the (United Nations) Security Council … to do more to help defend that democracy.”

AP-ES-08-04-06 1611EDT