The newly crowned Nobel peace prize laureate, Al Gore, has moved to squash suggestions that he will stand as a candidate for the 2008 presidential elections.
"I don't have plans to be a candidate again," the former US vice-president told Norwegian television. "I'm involved in a different kind of campaign, a global campaign to change the way people think about the climate crisis."
The blunt statement effectively brings to an end the state of limbo, actively maintained by Mr Gore until this point, in which observers and supporters were left guessing his electoral intentions. The ambivalence had heightened speculation that he would stand next year for the office of which he was deprived in 2000 despite beating George Bush in the popular vote.
The room to manoeuvre in making a bid was always very slight, with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama proving popular among Democratic primary voters. But supporters - led by the website campaign Draft Gore which took out full-page adverts in the New York Times last week urging him to stand - hoped that the award of the Nobel peace prize would lead to a poll surge he could no longer resist.
That surge never came. A Gallup poll this week found the percentage of Democrats who wanted him to run had fallen from 54% in March to 48% now. By staying out of the race Mr Gore will avoid the gruelling battles in key primary states. Instead he will have the more gentle satisfaction of receiving the Nobel prize in Oslo on December 10.
Speaking of the award, which he shares with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Mr Gore told the Norwegian NRK channel that it was a "great honour", adding: "Personally, it means the chance to be more effective in delivering the message of the climate crisis and solving it."
