US President Donald Trump's summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will begin early on June 12 in Singapore, the White House has confirmed in its first announcement of a timetable for the closely-watched meeting.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said the two leaders would meet at 9am local time in the Asian city-state, adding that Trump was receiving daily security briefings on North Korea in anticipation of the meeting.
"We feel like things are continuing to move forward and good progress has been made," Sanders said. "We're continuing to prepare for the president's summit."
The talks, which were cancelled by Trump before being re-scheduled last week for the same day and place, are expected to focus on Pyongyang's nuclear weapons programme and tensions between the US and North Korea.
Trump said last week that the nuclear disarmament summit would only be the start of a diplomatic process.
Trump says the goal for the summit is denuclearising the Korean Peninsula although full agenda for the summit hasn't yet been announced.
Sanders called the letter that top North Korean official Kim Yong Chol delivered from Kim Jong Un to Trump on Friday "interesting" but wouldn't comment on its contents.
Russian President Vladimir Putin says Moscow hopes the summit between the US and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will help defuse tensions.
Putin said during an interview with Austrian public broadcaster ORF on Monday that the denuclearisation of the North shouldn't be "one-way road" and hopes the US should reward Pyongyang if it suspends nuclear and missile tests.
The Russian added that Russia, as a nation that shares a border with North Korea, is frightened by the prospect of a conflict.
Asked to comment on speculation that Putin might meet Kim at a regional security summit in China this weekend, Putin's foreign affairs adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said no such meeting is planned.
