Bush offers aid olive branch to North Korea

President George Bush said today he is prepared to reconsider a plan to give North Korea energy and food aid if the communist regime disarms its nuclear weapons programme.

Hoping to ease a growing crisis, the president said in the Oval Office: “I view this as an opportunity to bind together nations in the neighbourhood and around the world to make it clear to the North Koreans that we expect this issue to be resolved peacefully and we expect them to disarm – we expect them not to develop nuclear weapons.”