MAJOR JOINS CRITICS OF BRITAIN'S INTEGRATION WITH REST OF EUROPE.

Byline: Warren Hoge The New York Times

In a high-risk maneuver to invigorate his flagging re-election campaign, Prime Minister John Major yielded Thursday to the increasingly vocal anti-European wing of his party and declared his opposition to proposals for Britain's integration into Europe.

With only two weeks to go before the May 1 vote and various polls showing the Conservatives 17 to 25 points behind Labor, Major suggested that his rival, Tony Blair, would sell out British interests to the French and the Germans if he became prime minister.

Blair responded that the action by Major proved he is unable to control his party and reflects poorly on his ability to continue running the country. ``If you are engaged in fighting with your own party 14 days before an election, something is wrong,'' he said.

Standing at a news conference before an illuminated slogan, ``You can't trust Labor on Europe,'' Major held aloft a draft review of European Union treaties to be discussed at a summit meeting in the Netherlands in June. He said most of the treaties are ``quite literally unthinkable'' for Britain.

But Major stood by his position that Britain should take part in talks about the proposed monetary union, even if the ultimate decision should be against joining.

He stopped criticizing Tory candidates' anti-Europe approach, however, and aligned himself with their attitudes. ``Centralism, federalism - more decisions taken by bureaucrats and politicians in Brussels and the European Parliament, rather than here in the British Parliament - is frankly a route that is not acceptable to us,'' he said.

Listing his own achievements as a shrewd negotiator, he said that the Labor Party may ``claim these days not to wave the red flag, but they'd certainly go to Amsterdam and wave the white flag.''

In the news conference at Conservative Party headquarters, he claimed Labor would ``play the game of `follow my European leaders.' ''

Malcolm Rifkind, his foreign minister, said the German chancellor and the French president ``would eat Blair for breakfast and digest him for lunch.''

Major made a key concession to the increasing number of anti-Europe rebels in his party. He said that, if re-elected, he would permit a parliamentary free vote - in which party members would have no obligation to abide by party policy - on Britain's joining in use of a single European currency.

Given the way sentiment in the Conservative Party is running, such a vote would be against it.

Major has been battered in recent days by revelations that two junior ministers and more than 200 Tory candidates were campaigning against monetary union in defiance of the party's declared position.

On Wednesday, the prime minister asked them to respect his wait-and-see policy of remaining in the negotiations and withholding a final decision.

Then, just one day later, Major moved much closer to his critics. The party refilmed his scheduled television campaign address to focus it on Europe and bought full-page advertisements in all the major newspapers making the Conservative case for going slow in Europe.

Major acted Thursday in the hope of reclaiming leadership and solving a problem that has muddled his efforts to unite the party during almost all of six years in office. His opponents argued that the move showed just the opposite.

``You have got - two weeks out from a general election - a Conservative Party in chaos, the leader of it having to appeal for unity literally 14 days before an election,'' Blair said. ``This effort to stop the civil war in the Conservative Party has failed.''

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PHOTO Stumping for re-election, British Prime Minister John Major holds a tot.

Associated Press