French former prime minister and centre-right politician Dominique de Villepin has announced he will stand for president in the 2012 election.

法国前总理、中右派政客多米尼克·德维尔潘宣布将参加2012年总统选举。

Dominique de Villepin announced his candidacy on French TV channel TF1
The long-time rival of incumbent¹ President Nicolas Sarkozy made his announcement on French TV.

Mr Sarkozy himself has not formally declared a bid for re-election but is widely expected to do so.

France's Socialist² opposition³ recently elected Francois Hollande as their candidate for the presidency⁴.

Recent opinion polls suggested Mr de Villepin, 58, would only get 1 or 2% of the vote.

His candidacy will certainly annoy the president because he will take away precious votes in the first round of the election at the end of April, the BBC's Hugh Schofield reports from Paris.

But it is hard to see him as a serious contender as many of his former friends and allies have moved over to President Sarkozy's camp, our correspondent adds.

Furthermore, he has just been named in a corruption⁵ enquiry, accused of putting pressure on a businessman not to give information to the police that might implicate⁶ one of his friends.

Nadine Morano, the election chief of Mr Sarkozy's governing UMP party, called on Mr de Villepin to abandon his bid and "back Mr Sarkozy instead".

'Divided again'

Mr de Villepin is presenting himself as a candidate above party politics, correspondents say. He recently set up a new political movement, United Republic (French: Republique solidaire), which contains members of the UMP.

"I want to reunite all the French, those on the left, those on the right, and those in the centre," he told the TF1 channel.

"I intend to defend a certain idea of France," Mr de Villepin.

His words evoked⁷（引起） a famous phrase of General de Gaulle, our correspondent says.

The former prime minister said he was "concerned" to see France "humiliated⁸ by the law of markets which encroaches（侵占） further and further in austerity".

This was a clear reference to the deal in Europe just masterminded by Mr Sarkozy and German Chancellor⁹ Angela Merkel in order to save the euro, our correspondent says.

Describing Mr de Villepin as a "man on his own without financial means or a political movement", Ms Morano said she hoped he would not "make the mistake of [causing] a division in 2012".

She said he belonged to the "UMP family" and should stand in the French parliamentary election - which follows the presidential poll - instead.

A Socialist senator, Andre Vallini, said: "I don't think it's good news for us but it's bad news for Mr Sarkozy. The right is a bit more divided again."