WASHINGTON -- Former Vice President Al Gore is making a concerted effort not to be drawn into the fight over who should become the Democratic presidential nominee, he told US television in an interview broadcast Sunday.

"I'm trying to stay out of it," Gore told CBS television's "60 Minutes" news broadcast, even as fears continued to mount that the bitter nomination fight between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama threatens to tear the Democratic Party apart.

Gore acknowledged having been courted by both campaigns for his endorsement.

"They both call," he told CBS, adding wryly that the Clinton and Obama teams somehow muster enough restraint to do so "not every minute."

But, he joked, "we unplugged the phones for this interview, so I can't say with authority."

And despite being a party leader and influential, uncommitted "superdelegate" he told the news channel, “I'm not applying for the job of broker," to help settle the nomination deadlock.”

Gore, an Academy Award winner, Nobel peace prize recipient and former vice president under Bill Clinton, is one of the party's 795 superdelegates who are free to vote for either of the two candidates contesting the party's presidential nomination.

Currently Clinton has 1,497 delegates to 1,628 for Obama, and with only a few primaries left to go neither seem set to pocket the 2,025 delegates needed to secure the nomination at the party's August convention, which means the battle will most likely be settled by the superdelegates.