Pacific Rim Bureau (CNSNews.com) - Australia's official opposition leader, who less than four months ago was vowing to replace Prime Minister John Howard and pull Australia out of the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, resigned on Tuesday.

Citing ill health, Mark Latham said he would quit both as leader of the Labor Party and as a member of Australia's federal parliament.

Latham, 43, fell ill with pancreatitis shortly before the Oct. 9 election -- which Howard won easily -- and again last month.

"After 17 years [in politics] and two serious life-threatening illnesses, the time has come to put my family and my health first," he told a press conference in Sydney.

Latham said the pancreatitis "and the uncertain timing of the attacks are incompatible with the demands and stresses of a parliamentary life."

Tuesday's announcement was an ignominious one for a politician who soared to the helm of his party a year ago, amid predictions that he would end the conservative Howard's eight-year reign.

Latham, who once called President Bush "the most incompetent and dangerous president in living memory," strongly opposed the Iraq war and Australia's military participation in it.

By pledging to pull out Australian troops from the coalition by last Christmas, he presented voters with a clear choice between himself and Howard, one of Bush's most consistent allies.

In the end, in an election decided on the economy and other domestic issues, Howard swept to victory with an enhanced mandate.

Since the defeat, Latham's popularity in the polls has fallen further, and he came under fire for not issuing an immediate statement following the tsunami disaster that ravaged Australia's northern neighbors on Dec. 26.

Kim Beazley, a former defense minister who led Labor to successive election defeats in 1998 and 2001, expressed interest Tuesday in standing once again for the party leadership.

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