Donald Trump promises Kim Jong-un power and riches if he plays along – and death like Libya’s Gaddafi if he doesn’t

US President Donald Trump tried to put his summit with Kim Jong-un back on track on Thursday, offering the North Korean leader guarantees of staying in power if he abandons nuclear weapons – but threatening a grisly death if he refuses.

As prospects for a historic summit next month between the two leaders dimmed, Trump told reporters that if the meeting were to go ahead successfully, Kim “will get protections that will be very strong”, and that “He’d be in his country and running his country. His country would be very rich.”

But the pledge came barbed with a warning that if diplomacy fails, Kim could suffer the same fate as Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, who was overthrown and killed by rebels following a Nato-backed coup.

Libya has been invoked repeatedly by Trump’s hawkish national security adviser, John Bolton, as a road map for dealing with North Korean denuclearisation. 

In 2003, Gaddafi agreed to the elimination of his country’s nuclear programme and chemical weapons arsenal to gain sanctions relief. But Pyongyang appeared to zero in on what happened a decade later during the Libyan military intervention, when Nato-backed rebels ousted the government and killed Gaddafi.