Italy's foreign minister Angelino Alfano was on Tuesday due to attend a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels, where North Korea and Russia were expected to be among top issues on the agenda.
At the invitation of the European Union's foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, Alfano was due to attend a working lunch with US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, the Italian foreign ministry said.
A ceremony to unveil the logo of the next NATO summit in 2018 was due to take place after the summit. Alfano was also slated to hold a press conference with Italian reporters before returning to Rome on Tuesday evening, the ministry said.
Tuesday's meeting comes a week after North Korea carried out its latest intercontinental ballistic missile test of its new Hwasong-15 warhead, which it said put all of the US mainland within reach.
NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg said on Monday that the transatlantic alliance and the international community need to "put maximum pressure" on the rogue regime to de-escalate the situation as a war would have "catastrophic" consequences.