PARIS: Nicolas Sarkozy formally declared on Wednesday night that he will run for a second term as president of France later this year.Sarkozy appeared live on the evening news of the private TV channel TF1 to kick off a difficult re-election battle, saying not to run would be like a captain abandoning his ship in a storm.

Asked why he was standing, he said: "France, Europe and the world has for the past three years seen a series of unprecedented crises" and not standing again would be like "the captain of a ship in the middle of a storm saying 'I'm tired, I'm giving up'." He said would create a "strong" France based on the values of "work".

Lagging behind the Socialist favourite, Francois Hollande, he faces addressing the concerns of a country hit hard by the economic crisis while throwing the spotlight off his much-criticised record of five years in office and his unpopularity.

Sarkozy will launch into a bruising campaign tour to reinvent himself. He began with a visit on Thursday to a cheese factory in the Alps, seen as a nod to Charles de Gaulle's famous quip about the difficulty of bringing together "a country with 265 different kinds of cheeses". He is expected to outline his political vision in a big rally in Marseille on Sunday.

"Now the real campaign starts," the French foreign minister and Sarkozy ally Alain Juppe told French radio.

Sarkozy, in an interview with Le Figaro this weekend, stressed right-wing "values" and the importance of France's Christian heritage, appealing to far-right supporters of Marine Le Pen's Front National.

He set the tone for a campaign that will pitch the values of work against a benefits culture. His opponents attacked him as divisive after suggestions of referendums on how to deal with illegal immigrants and the unemployed. Sarkozy approved as "common sense" controversial remarks by his interior minister and ally, Claude Gueant, that "not all civilisations are of equal value", implying some, such as the French, are to be valued more highly.

Sarkozy was elected in 2007 with a huge mandate to change France, but 70 per cent of French electors now see his record in office as negative. France is in the grip of a recession, a debt crisis and has a black hole in state coffers.

Jobs are the main priority for voters. Sarkozy promised full employment but joblessness is at a 12-year-high with almost a million more people out of work than when he took office. He is working on a book described as a kind of mea culpa, to make him seem more humane.

Sarkozy's advisers hope the campaign launch will bring a quick poll lift. The president had banked on waiting to declare his candidacy until the eleventh hour in March, hoping to maintain a presidential aura and adopting a Churchillian strategy of political "courage" in an economic crisis. Last month he announced a range of unpopular measures including an increase in sales tax, presented as a reform blitz to lift France out of its economic gloom.

But the measures failed to boost him in the polls.

A poll on Wednesday by Harris Interactive for VSD magazine, put Hollande on 28 per cent for the first round in April, with Sarkozy on 24 per cent, Le Pen on 20 and the centrist Francois Bayrou on 13 per cent. The Harris poll has showed Hollande scoring 57 per cent against 43 per cent for Sarkozy in the second round.

By arrangement with the Guardian