Bush offers China co-op on space exploration

Washington, Apr 21: President George W Bush offered Chinese President Hu Jintao greater US cooperation on space exploration and planned to send the head of NASA to China later this year.

Bush was ''trying to deepen the relationship between our two societies and our two cultures,'' Dennis Wilder, an Asia specialist at the White House national security council said yesterday.

''There are some things that the Chinese also have in terms of sensor technologies and information that we are interested in, in terms of global climate and other issues,'' Wilder said.

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin would probably go to China later this year ''to begin to consult on the subject of space exploration and where we might have common interests and where we might begin to work together as the two nations on the Earth with the most ambitious space programs in the 21st century,'' Wilder said.

REUTERS