German Chancellor Angela Merkel is planning to meet US President Donald Trump for the first time in Washington on March 14, the White House revealed on Friday.
White House deputy spokeswoman Sarah Sanders confirmed the date of the meeting and said a joint press conference was likely.
"Such a plan is in the works," a German source added. Separately, government spokesman Steffen Seibert said that "we are not denying" reports of the planned meeting.
While former US president Barack Obama had labelled Merkel an "outstanding partner," there has been little known contact between the German leader and Trump since he took office.
Following Mr Trump's shock election, Merkel reminded the billionaire of democratic values in their first phone conversation.
Any "close cooperation" must be on the basis of the "values of democracy, freedom, respect for the rule of law and human dignity, regardless of origin, skin colour, religion, gender, sexual orientation or political belief," she said at the time.
Ms Merkel has also criticised Mr Trump's decision seeking to ban citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States.
In turn, Mr Trump has been a strident critic of Merkel's liberal refugee policy that has led more than a million asylum seekers to come to Germany since 2015.
Meanwhile, a human rights expert has voiced alarm that Mr Trump might allow torture in interrogations, warning that it "lays down the gauntlet" for other countries to follow suit.
The US president said recently he felt "absolutely" that the practice of waterboarding - a form of simulated drowning - worked as an intelligence-gathering tool.
UN special rapporteur on protecting human rights Ben Emmerson told the UN Human Rights Council that hearing Mr Trump extol torture as a weapon against terrorism shortly after his inauguration "was enough to make my blood run cold".
Making his final public comments after six years in the independent post, Mr Emmerson later told reporters that Mr Trump was the first democratically-elected head of state to positively advocate torture.
"That is a state of affairs which lays down the gauntlet, it lays down a precedent."
Mr Emmerson, a British barrister and international criminal justice expert, said that these comments showed a "staggering level of ill-preparedness to govern."
He also told reporters that rescinding former president Barack Obama's executive order to close the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba would be a "grave retrograde step".
The US delegation to the 47-member state forum in Geneva did not take the floor to respond.
Emmerson also said senior officials from George W Bush's administration should be prosecuted for allowing torture.
