WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump has contradicted his own national security adviser, saying the so-called “Libya model” for de-neuclarisation is not being pursued with North Korea.
The suggestion by John Bolton angered the North, which threatened to pull out of a summit with Mr Trump next month.
Mr Trump said he still thought a summit would happen.
In 2003, Libya’s leader Muammar Gaddafi agreed to give up his nuclear programme in exchange for a lifting of sanctions.
However, he was killed by Western-backed rebels years later – a comparison that appears to have alarmed North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Pyongyang warned on Wednesday that it might not attend the talks, due to take place in Singapore on 12 June. As Mr Bolton looked on, the US president said: “The Libyan model isn’t a model that we have at all when we’re thinking of North Korea.”
The deal Mr Trump was considering with Kim Jong-un would be “something where he’d be there, he’d be in his country, he’d be running his country, his country would be very rich. “If you look at South Korea, this would be really a South Korean model in terms of their industry… They’re hard-working, incredible people.”
On the planned summit, Mr Trump said: “Nothing has changed on North Korea that we know of. We have not been told anything. “And if it does that’s fine and if it doesn’t I think we’ll probably have a very successful meeting.”
Pyongyang has been angered by continuing US-South Korea joint military exercises which it sees as a rehearsal for invasion. It cancelled planned high-level talks with South Korea earlier this week.
In a statement, chief negotiator Ri Son-gwon reverted to the angry language the North has used before, describing South Korean authorities as incompetent and senseless in comments reported by state news agency KCNA.
