Gore 'has no plan to run for president again'

Former US vice president Al Gore said today that winning the Nobel Peace Prize has not made him want to enter the 2008 presidential race.

Mr Gore told Norwegian state broadcaster NRK: "I don't have plans to be a candidate again, so I don't really see it in that context at all."

At a press conference in California last Friday, Mr Gore sidestepped the issue of a US presidential run, saying that he wanted to "get back to business" on "a planetary emergency".

Mr Gore shared the Nobel prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations network of scientists.

The scientific panel has explained the dry details of global warming in thousands of pages of footnoted reports every few years since 1990.

A Gallup Poll yesterday found that there was no increase in support for Mr Gore to run for office.

Asked if they would like to see Mr Gore run for president in 2008, respondents said no by a margin of 54% to 41% - about the same as in March, when people opposed his running by 57% to 38%.

Even among Democrats there was no visible surge of interest in Mr Gore. In the new survey, 48% of them said they would like him to run and 43% said they would not.

In March, Democrats were in favour of his entering the race by 54% to 41% - statistically the same as the new poll.