Gore makes it to the White House

Al Gore finally made it to the White House yesterday when President Bush, who narrowly beat him in the bitter fight for America's highest office in 2000, invited the former vice president along with the other 2007 Nobel Prize winners. Before disappearing for a 30-minute tete-a-tete, the two men shared a photo op before a phalanx of reporters and photographers. "Familiar faces," Gore said of the media. Bush smiled but said nothing and the photo session continued in awkward silence.

The private meeting afterwards provoked intense speculation among reporters as to what they discussed. Bush wouldn't say but Gore, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on the environment, allowed that he and the president- on a break from Arab-Israeli peace negotiations - spent the entire 30 minutes talking about global warming.

It's likely Gore did most of the talking. In 2004, he said: "George W Bush has by all odds been by far the worst president for the environment in the entire history of the United States of America - bar none." (Continued below)

Despite the awkwardness of the occasion, it turns out the president personally telephoned Gore to extend the invitation, and the White House changed the date of the event so Gore could attend. Bush's press secretary told reporters the president was willing to let bygones be bygones.

During the 2000 election campaign, the two made no secret of their dislike for each other. Their rivalry was sealed by the election's historic outcome - a split between the popular vote, which Gore won, and the electoral vote, which the Supreme Court gave to Bush in an acrimonious judicial decision.

There was a brief truce after 9/11, when Gore publicly called Bush his commander in chief, and pledged his support. But in recent years, Gore has not hesitated to criticise the president's leadership. He was an early and vocal critic of the war in Iraq, and he has called Bush the most dishonest president since Richard Nixon. In his latest book An Assault on Reason, he accuses the president of repeatedly breaking the law.