SYDNEY, Sept 10: Former United States vice-president Al Gore said on Sunday he would not rule out running again for the presidency. “I haven’t completely ruled out running for president again in the future but I don’t expect to,” said Gore.

Gore, 58, who had been vice-president under Bill Clinton for two terms and was widely tipped to win the top job, is in Australia to promote his documentary on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth.

The politician-turned-environmental-campaigner told a news conference there was no doubt he could make more of an impact on environmental issues as president, but he was doing what he could.

“I am under no illusions that there is any position with as much influence as that of president of the United States,” he said.

“I wish I had become president, but I didn’t and I have found other ways to serve,” he said.

Clinton’s wife Hillary, now a senator from New York, consistently tops polls of voter preferences for a Democratic presidential candidate for 2008.

Gore said he believed his documentary work could make a difference in the way people approached environmental issues.

“I think by delivering this message in my slide shows, in the movie and my book, it is an effective way to deliver a message that is important to people,” he said.

Gore criticises Australia and the United States in the documentary as the only countries not to sign the Kyoto protocol on cutting greenhouse gas emissions blamed for global warming.

Prime Minister John Howard said on Sunday he would not meet Gore during his visit but ‘might’ watch the documentary at some stage.

Howard said he did not take policy advice from films, even documentaries based on fact.

—AFP