Seoul, South Korea ? North Korea announced Tuesday it would freeze its nuclear weapons projects in return for the United States providing energy aid and removing Pyongyang from a list of countries that sponsor terrorism. President Bush rejected the offer.

The North’s terms amounted to a response to a plan offered a day earlier by the United States, Japan and South Korea for ending the standoff about the communist state’s nuclear weapons program.

Bush’s statement, and similar remarks by White House and State Department spokesmen, appeared part of jockeying for position in advance of another round of talks with North Korea. The impoverished North has often tried to use the nuclear confrontation as a means to win economic aid and diplomatic recognition.

While Washington and its allies have sought the dismantling of North Korea’s nuclear programs, Tuesday’s proposal from Pyongyang offered only to “freeze” them as a first step. The North added, however, that the long-term goal is to “de-nuclearize the Korean peninsula.”

“The goal of the United States is not for a freeze of the nuclear program,” Bush said. “The goal is to dismantle a nuclear weapons program in a verifiable and irreversible way.”

“That,” he said, “is the clear message we are sending to the North Koreans.”

The president spoke at a brief news conference with Premier Wen Jiabao of China, who visited Bush at the White House. The Chinese are working to revive stalled talks between North Korea and the United States, South Korea, Japan, Russia and China after a five-month pause.