Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin set to meet in July

US president Donald Trump is likely to hold his first meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin in July, the Kremlin said yesterday.

Mr Trump spoke with Mr Putin from the Oval Office yesterday. It was the first time they had spoken since last month's US missile strikes on Syria.

They discussed the establishment of safe zones within Syria and tensions over North Korea, the White House said.

The discussion took place amid reports that dozens of refugees were killed in an attack by Islamic State near Syria's north eastern border with Iraq.

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The US took the world by surprise last month by ordering missile strikes on an airfield controlled by Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, who is allied with Russia in the Syrian civil war.

The possible meeting will take place against the background of investigations into links between the Trump presidential campaign team and the Kremlin, including an FBI inquiry.

Mr Trump's recent overtures to authoritarian leaders, including the president of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte, whom he invited to the White House at the weekend, has prompted criticism from many in the Republican Party over a possible shift in foreign policy.

North Korea

Mr Trump said he would be “honoured” to meet the leader of North Korea “under the right circumstances,” describing Kim Jong-un as a “pretty smart cookie.”

Meanwhile, in one of her few public appearances since last November's election, former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton cited FBI director James Comey's intervention in the closing weeks of the presidential campaign as the primary reason that she lost.

“If the election were on October 27th, I would be your president,” she said, referring to Mr Comey’s announcement on October 28th that he was opening a new investigation into Mrs Clinton’s use of an email server while secretary of state.

“It wasn’t a perfect campaign. There is no such thing,” she said. “But I was on the way to winning until a combination of [FBI director] Jim Comey’s letter on October 28th and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me but got scared off.”

Speaking at a women’s event in New York, Mrs Clinton confirmed that she was writing a book on the 2016 contest, a process she described as “painful.”