Trump to attend NATO leaders meeting in May

The White House has confirmed that President Donald Trump will attend a NATO leaders' summit scheduled for May.

"The President looks forward to meeting with his NATO counterparts to reaffirm our strong commitment to NATO, and to discuss issues critical to the alliance, especially allied responsibility-sharing and NATO's role in the fight against terrorism," the CNN quoted a statement from the White House as saying.

The statement added that, in addition to the Leaders Meeting, Trump will also host Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the White House next month.

The announcement comes on the heels of a decision by U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to skip a NATO foreign ministers' meeting, and instead host Chinese President Xi Jingping later this month, before visiting Russia in April.

State Department acting spokesman Mark Toner told reporters Tuesday afternoon that the meeting's dates didn't fit in Tillerson's schedule and a NATO official confirmed that the group is still negotiating with the State Department to schedule the meeting. Toner said the agency is "certainly appreciative of the effort to accommodate Secretary Tillerson."

The official added that Tillerson's schedule isn't the only one they're coordinating on.