Washington - Former US vice president Al Gore would be considered for a high-level position in a Barack Obama administration, the Democratic presidential candidate said Wednesday. Asked at a Pennsylvania townhall meeting whether he would consider Gore for a place in his cabinet, Obama responded, "I would."
Gore lost a bitterly contested 2000 election to President George W Bush. He has since become an influential elder statesman of the centre-left Democratic Party and was briefly tipped to run again in 2004 and 2008 before deciding to stay on the sidelines.
Gore, 60, won the Nobel Peace Prize last year - together with a United Nations-backed climate panel - for his efforts to raise awareness of global warming.
Both Obama and rival Hillary Clinton have been actively seeking the endorsement of Gore ahead of the next major nominating contest on April 22 in Pennsylvania. Gore served as vice president from 1993- 2001 under former president Bill Clinton, Hillary's husband.
Obama said that he has spoken regularly with Gore, and that as president he would at the very least seek to make Gore a key policy adviser on climate change.
"Gore would be at the table and play a central role in us figuring out how we solve this problem," he said. "Climate change is real. "It's something we have to deal with now."
