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Washington: Seven years ago, this could not have been how Al Gore envisaged his time in the Oval Office: as a guest.
In one of those life-can-be-awkward moments, Gore, who was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his work on global warming, spent 40 minutes with President Bush on Monday before attending a ceremony honouring the American winners of the Nobel Prize.
It was the first time the former vice-president had stepped into the Oval Office since 2001, after he lost the disputed 2000 presidential election to Bush. The two men have differed on many topics, but none quite so publicly as global warming - on its causes, on possible ramifications and on steps to ameliorate it.
Onetime rivals
Gore described the meeting as "very cordial" and said of Bush: "He was very gracious in setting up the meeting. It was a very good and substantive conversation."
The onetime rivals met privately before what has become a traditional Oval Office welcome for Nobel honorees from the United States. On December 10, at a ceremony in Oslo, Norway, Gore - along with a UN agency, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - will be formally awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for efforts to bring global attention to the dangers of Earth's changing climate.
Monday's cordiality contrasted sharply with the tone of a telephone conversation in the wee hours of November 8, 2000, at the start of what turned into a five-week post-election campaign.
Private meeting
Gore initially had conceded defeat in a call to Bush, then called a second time to withdraw the concession. Bush's response prompted Gore to famously snap: "You don't have to be snippy about it."
Monday's meeting was the third for the two men since the election was decided by the Supreme Court and the first in which they apparently focused on a substantive issue.
Gore said he and Bush had "a private meeting, and I'm not going to say anything about it."
Did they talk about global warming?
"Of course we talked about global warming - the whole time," Gore said.
Nobel winners
After the private session, Gore was joined in the Oval Office by Mario R. Capecchi and Oliver Smithies, who are being honoured with the Nobel Prize for medicine for their discoveries in stem-cell research, and Eric S. Maskin and Roger B. Myerson, winners of the Nobel Prize for economics. A third economics winner, Leonid Hurwicz, was unable to attend, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said.
Three members of the US delegation to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - Sharon Hays, Susan Solomon and Harlan L. Watson - also attended the ceremony.
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