The White House on Wednesday dismissed suggestions that President Trump is using Libyan disarmament as a model for his negotiations with North Korea, a day after Kim Jong Un threatened to cancel his upcoming summit with the U.S. leader.
National security adviser John Bolton first made the comparison to Libya during a television appearance last month, telling Fox News the Trump administration “have very much in mind the Libya model from 2003, 2004” as they approach talks with the Kim regime. Former President George W. Bush agreed to scale back sanctions on Libya in 2003 after the country’s leader at the time Moammar Gadhafi promised to abandon his nuclear weapons pursuit.
North Korean officials cited Bolton’s comments in a statement issued by state-run media earlier Wednesday, describing the strategy as “an awfully sinister move to impose on our dignified state the destiny of Libya or Iraq, which had been collapsed due to yielding the whole of their countries to big powers.”
“It is absolutely absurd to dare compare [North Korea], a nuclear weapon state, to Libya which had been at the initial stage of nuclear development,” the statement read.
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders appeared to downplay Bolton’s comments following the statement by North Korea’s vice minister of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“I know that that comment was made. There’s not a cookie-cutter model on how this would work,” Sanders said, adding that she wasn’t “aware that [Libya] is a model that we’re using.”
Trump is scheduled to hold talks with his North Korean counterpart on June 12 in Singapore, but the meeting was placed in jeopardy on Tuesday after Kim canceled a meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in over joint military exercises with the U.S. The Kim regime said in its statement about the canceled meeting that it has no interest in moving forward on a summit with Trump if it’s a “one-sided affair.”
