WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) -- General Motors Corp. plans to eliminate 25,000 jobs in the United States by 2008 by closing additional assembly and components plants, part of a plan to revive its struggling North American operations.

Speaking to shareholders at GM's 96th annual shareholder meeting in Delaware Tuesday morning, Chairman and Chief Executive Rick Wagoner said the capacity and employment reductions will generate annual savings of roughly $2.5 billion.

Wagoner revealed the cutbacks as he laid out a four-step strategy to revive GM's North American business, the biggest and most troubling part of the world's largest automaker.

Wagoner focused on priorities for clarifying the role of each of GM's eight brands, intensifying efforts to reduce cost and improve quality and continuing to search for ways to reduce skyrocketing health care costs.

He noted that the company's current $1,500 per unit health-care expense puts GM at a "significant disadvantage versus foreign-based competitors," and said GM has conducted "intense discussions" with the unions about how to reduce health-care costs.

General Motors shares rose 52 cents, or 1.7 percent, to $30.94 in early trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian's offer to purchase 28 million GM shares at $31 apiece, boosting his stake to about 9 percent from 4 percent, expires later today.

GM may be able to handle much of the reduction by offering early retirement incentives, said David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research, an independent research group, estimating that more than 25,000 of the company's U.S. workers are near retirement age.

GM's UAW contract essentially forces it to pay union employees during the life of the contract even if hourly workers are laid off and their plants are closed.

"As things currently stand, GM has too many brands, workers, managers, capacity, and bureaucracy," said Peter Morici, a business professor at the University of Maryland and a critic of GM's management who says the cuts announced Tuesday were too little and too late.