KAMPALA, UGANDA - Former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, the 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee who is widely expected to make a run for the presidency in 2008, completed his first visit to Uganda on Monday in what he called an effort to draw attention to one of the world's most neglected refugee crises.
Edwards' visit was sponsored by the International Rescue Committee in New York. Its officials took him to IRC projects in the district of Kitgum, where most people live in government camps, and outside the town of Lira, where some people displaced by warfare have begun returning to their homes
The Lord's Resistance Army, a rebel group, has engaged in a 20-year campaign of murder and mutilation across northern Uganda. The rebels have abducted some 30,000 boys and girls to serve as soldiers or sex slaves.
For Edwards, who is scheduled to travel to Beijing this month, the trip might help burnish his image should he make a presidential run. Edwards' lack of foreign policy experience hurt his campaign for the 2004 presidential nomination, and he has spent a substantial amount of time overseas since he left the Senate in an effort to erase that deficit.
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