Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will meet US President Donald Trump in Washington next month, the White House has told the ABC.

A White House official said that the two leaders would meet on October 20. 

Mr Albanese later confirmed the October meeting, and said it was understandable Mr Trump did not have time to meet while they were both in New York for the UN General Assembly this week.

“Today, the meetings that President Trump are having — he’s in New York for one day — are understandably focused on peace in the Middle East,” he told reporters in Manhattan.

“And in addition to that, there’s a meeting with [Ukrainian] President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy.”

Mr Albanese may get the chance to meet Mr Trump at a function the president is hosting in the evening — but the White House said more than 100 world leaders were invited to that event.

“I’ll be attending the forum … with President Trump that he’s hosting later today. And that’s exactly what we expected, and that’s what we told people was going to happen.”

The October meeting will involve a stand-alone trip by the prime minister to Washington, rather than a meeting on the sidelines of another international gathering in what is known as “summit season” — the months at the end of the year dominated on the global stage by a series of international summits.

Asked if he was worried about how Mr Trump could treat him at the White House, given the hostility shown to some other visiting world leaders, Mr Albanese said: “We have a good relationship. We’ve had respectful calls. Australia and the United States are great partners. I expect it to be very constructive.”

He declined to say if Mr Trump had given him any guarantees about the AUKUS submarine pact during those calls. He also would not say if he would seek exemptions to US tariffs at the upcoming meeting.

Confirmation of the meeting comes after months of questions about the fact that there has not been a meeting between the two leaders since Mr Trump’s return to the White House in January.

Albanese’s meeting with Trump significant as AUKUS ties Australia to US

For now the prime minister has an answer to one pesky question.

They were scheduled to meet on the sidelines of the G7 meeting in Canada in June.

But Mr Trump cut short his time there in order to return to the US capital amid intensifying hostilities between Israel and Iran.

The prime minister’s office had been briefing journalists before Mr Albanese left Australia that they didn’t expect a meeting in New York during the current UN General Assembly, but they were confident a later meeting would take place.

Mr Trump is holding a series of bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the UN gathering, where he spoke on Tuesday morning, local time. 

As well as meeting with a group of Muslim-majority nations and Mr Zelenskyy, he also sat down with the leaders of Argentina, France, Uzbekistan and the EU, and the secretary-general of the UN.