NEW ORLEANS, (Reuters):

John Edwards, the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2004, launched a run for the presidency yesterday with a call to cut U.S. troops in Iraq, reduce global warming and end poverty in America.

To drive home his populist message, Edwards opened his campaign among the debris and wreckage of New Orleans' lower Ninth Ward, which was wiped out in Hurricane Katrina last year.

and where the storm's mostly poor victims are still struggling to rebuild.

"I'm announcing here because no place better demonstrates the two Americas I've talked about for a long time," the former North Carolina senator said in an e-mail to supporters.

Edwards, who has opened an anti-poverty center in North Carolina and promised during his first presidential bid to be "a champion for regular people" campaigned with Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts in 2004 on closing the economic gap between the "two Americas" -- one for the comfortable and another for the struggling.