Trump and Kim are sticking their necks out on this one. We wish them well

BARRING another hitch, US President Donald Trump will meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un this morning. It is a meeting that has come despite threats and counter threats of nuclear attack. Somehow all that hostility was overcome and a meeting was set up.

Politically orthodox pundits in Washington hold that lower level officials should have worked out all the details of a potential agreement before the two leaders met. They point to the 1994 Agreement Framework, which was supposed to freeze Pyongyang's nuclear programme and normalise US-North Korea relations as a template for today's talks. But Pyongyang had much less to give up then. It had not even tested its missiles. Its nuclear weapons programme was still in the early stages. Yet it went nowhere because that accord depended on several undertakings that did not materialise.

Washington was to have delivered two light water nuclear reactors by 2003 to compensate for the loss of Pyongyang's nuclear power. Until then, the US was supposed to have provided Pyongyang with about 450,000 (metric) tonnes of heavy fuel. As well, the two sides were to have normalised diplomatic relations, with all sanctions lifted. There was to have been a formal end to the Korean War.