WASHINGTON - Former U.S. Senator John Edwards has officially announced he will seek the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.Edwards announced his candidacy Thursday in a neighborhood of the southern U.S. city of New Orleans that was devastated by Hurricane Katrina in August 2005.

He said the neighborhood helped illustrate his campaign theme of the need to fight poverty and economic inequality in America.

Edwards urged Americans to take action if they want to change the country for the better.

He also described the choices for the United States in Iraq as “bad and worse” and called on President Bush to take responsibility for his actions there.

Edwards said the United States must leave Iraq and turn over responsibility for security to Iraqi forces.

The 53-year-old Edwards is a former trial lawyer who was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1998 from the southeastern state of North Carolina. He unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004, and later became the vice-presidential running mate for the eventual nominee, Senator John Kerry of the northeastern state of Massachusetts.

After Kerry lost the election to President Bush, Edwards left the Senate to direct a research center on poverty at the University of North Carolina School of Law.

Edwards joins Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack and Representative Dennis J. Kucinich, who have already announced their intention to seek the 2008 nomination.

Two other prominent Democratic senators, New York’s Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama of Illinois, are expected to announce their candidacies in early 2007.

Source:  VOA News