'A very special moment': Trump to meet Kim Jong-un on June 12 in Singapore

Leaders of the United States and North Korea will meet for the first time when U.S. President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un hold a summit on June 12 in Singapore where the U.S. side will try to persuade Pyongyang to give up its nuclear weapons.

Trump made the announcement via Twitter on Thursday.

The two men whose countries are still technically at war exchanged fiery rhetoric last year over North Korea's attemptsto build a nuclear weapon that could reach the United States.

But tensions have since eased greatly, starting around thetime of the North's participation in the Winter Olympics in South Korea in February.

The announcement came just hours after three Americans whohad been held prisoner in North Korea arrived at a U.S. militarybase outside Washington, having been released by Kim as agesture ahead of the summit.

'Avery good chance'

Trump said on their arrival that he believed Kim wanted tobring North Korea "into the real world" and had high hopes for their planned meeting, which would be the first between aserving U.S. president and a North Korean leader.

"Ithink we have a very good chance of doing something verymeaningful," Trump said. "My proudest achievement will be thisis part of it when we denuclearize that entire peninsula."

New U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has visitedPyongyang twice in recent weeks once as head of the CIA but there has been no sign that he cleared up the central questionof whether North Korea will be willing to bargain away nuclearweapons that its rulers have long seen as crucial to theirsurvival.

In a speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate, DemocraticLeader Chuck Schumer warned Trump against going too far too fastin Singapore. The Republican president, Schumer said, shouldinsist upon strong, verifiable commitments from North Korea ondisarmament.

"I worry that this president, in his eagerness to strike adeal and get the acclaim and a photo op, will strike a quick one and a bad one, not a strong one, not a lasting one," Schumersaid.

'Maximum pressure'

During Trump's presidency, Kim has overseen weapons teststhat rattled the United States, South Korea and Japan as theNorth Korean leader attempted to showcase his military'sprogress on medium- and long-range missiles and atomic weapons.

Trump has credited a U.S. "maximum pressure" campaign fordrawing North Korea to the negotiating table and vowed to keepeconomic sanctions in place until Pyongyang takes concrete stepsto denuclearize.

But former spy chief Kim Yong-chul, director of North Korea's United Front Department, said in a toast to Pompeo over lunch in Pyongyang this week: "We have perfected our nuclear capability. It is our policy to concentrate all efforts into economic progress...This is not the result of sanctions that have been imposed from outside."

Kim recently promised to suspend missile tests and shut anuclear bomb test site.

North Korea is still technically at war with the UnitedStates and its ally South Korea because the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce, not a treaty.