U.S. President Donald Trump indicated Thursday he will provide North Korean leader Kim Jong Un with security assurances in return for denuclearization in an apparent effort to allay Pyongyang's concern about striking a deal with Washington.

"I think we'll actually have a good relationship, assuming we have the meeting and assuming something comes out of it," Trump told reporters, in reference to a Trump-Kim meeting slated for June 12 in Singapore. "And he'll get protections that will be very strong."

At the same time, Trump threatened Kim with the same fate as former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi if the North's leader does not make a deal on his nuclear weapons program.

[Pool photo, Getty/Kyodo]

Referring to the toppling of Gaddafi's regime and his death in 2011, Trump said, "That model would take place if we don't make a deal."

"We cannot let that country have nukes," he said of North Korea. "We just can't do it."

Trump, however, said that if he and Kim made a deal, "I think Kim Jong Un is going to be very, very happy."

"He'd be in his country. He'd be running his country. His country would be very rich," the U.S. leader said. "We're going to say that he will have very adequate protection."

Trump said he is not considering a so-called Libya model for dismantling North Korea's nuclear weapons program.

But he appeared to interpret the model to mean the 2011 North Atlantic Treaty Organization intervention in the northern African country in support of an uprising that led to Gaddafi's overthrow and killing.

"The Libyan model isn't a model that we have at all when we're thinking of North Korea," Trump said. "In Libya, we decimated that country...We never said to Gaddafi, 'Oh, we're going to give you protection.'"

(Muammar Gaddafi)

Trump made the remarks a day after a senior North Korean official threatened to cancel the Trump-Kim meeting and condemned U.S. national security adviser John Bolton for citing Gaddafi's agreement to surrender his nascent nuclear weapons program in the early 2000s as a basis for talks with Kim.

First Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan rebuked Bolton for advocating "the Libya model of 2003-2004" that precludes any concessions such as sanctions relief before full denuclearization. Pyongyang has blamed the Libya deal for Gaddafi's eventual downfall.

North Korea, whose formal name is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, has opted for "phased and synchronous measures" so Pyongyang can win rewards for every step it takes in the denuclearization process.

"If the U.S. is trying to drive us into a corner to force our unilateral nuclear abandonment, we will no longer be interested in such dialogue and cannot but reconsider our proceeding to the DPRK-U.S. summit," Kim Kye Gwan was quoted by the North's state media as saying Wednesday.

[Korea Summit Press Pool]

Despite such threats, Trump said Thursday nothing has changed with regard to what will be the first U.S.-North Korea summit.

U.S. and North Korean officials are discussing logistical details such as where to meet and how to meet "like nothing happened," according to the president.

Trump said he will not discuss U.S. troop levels in South Korea during his meeting with Kim Jong Un.