June 5 (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidates answered some foreign policy questions on Tuesday in a debate that included the issue of Iran's nuclear ambitions and the war in Iraq.

CALIFORNIA REP. DUNCAN HUNTER said the United States reserves the right to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons:

"I would authorize the use of tactical nuclear weapons if there was no other way to pre-empt those particular centrifuges."

FORMER NEW YORK MAYOR RUDOLPH GIULIANI on the threat Iran poses:

"Iran is a threat, a nuclear threat, not just because they can deliver a nuclear warhead with missiles. They're a nuclear threat because they are the biggest state sponsor of terrorism and they can hand nuclear materials to terrorists."

TEXAS REP. RON PAUL called pre-emptive war the most pressing moral issue in the United States:

"I do not believe that's part of the American tradition. We, in the past, have always declared war in defense of our liberties or go to aid somebody ... And now, tonight, we hear that we're not even willing to remove from the table a pre-emptive nuclear strike against a country that has done no harm to us directly and is no threat."

FORMER MASSACHUSETTS GOV. MITT ROMNEY disputed Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid's comment that the Iraq war was already lost:

"Harry Reid was wrong. We did not lose the war in Iraq. And that's not the sort of thing you say when you have men and women in harm's way. We did, however, not do a great job after we knocked down Saddam Hussein and won the war to take him down."

ARIZONA SEN. JOHN MCCAIN criticized Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton for saying in the Democrats' debate that Iraq was "George Bush's war":

"When Senator Clinton says this is Mr. Bush's war, that this is President Bush's war -- when President Clinton was in power, I didn't say that Bosnia, our intervention there was President Clinton's war. ... What Sen. Clinton doesn't understand is that presidents don't lose wars. Political parties don't lose wars. Nations lose wars, and nations ... have the consequences of failure."

KANSAS SEN. SAM BROWNBACK said the United States needs a political plan to move toward success in Iraq:

"The issue is that we've got to put forward, now, a political plan. And that's something I'm going to introduce tomorrow, a political plan to create a three-state solution in Iraq: a Kurdish state, a Sunni state, a Shia state. Because Iraq is more three groups held together by exterior forces."

FORMER WISCONSIN GOV. TOMMY THOMPSON on how he would use the services of a former President George W. Bush:

"I certainly would not send him to the United Nations.

"I believe George W. Bush has tremendous characteristics. He's very honest. He's very straightforward. I would put him out on a lecture series, talking to the youth of America about honesty, integrity, perseverance, passion, and serving the public."

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