U.S. President Donald Trump said Saturday that he is not expecting North Korea to take hostile actions or "interfere" in his re-election bid as tensions rise ahead of a year-end deadline for progress in their denuclearization talks.

"I'd be surprised if North Korea acted hostiley. I have a very good relationship with (leader) Kim Jong Un. I think we both want to keep it that way," Trump said at the White House after North Korea's ambassador to the United Nations reportedly said denuclearization may have to be off the negotiating table.

"He knows I have an election coming up. I don't think he wants to interfere with that. But we'll have to see," Trump also told reporters.

Trump met the North Korean leader three times from last year. At the first-ever U.S.-North Korea summit in June 2018 in Singapore, Trump promised to provide security guarantees to Pyongyang in return for "complete" denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

(People in Tokyo's Akihabara district walk past a screen reporting a meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in the inter-Korean truce village of Panmunjeom in the Demilitarized Zone on June 30, 2019.)

But talks have since shown little progress, with the two countries having been at odds over issues such as how much sanctions relief should be given to Pyongyang in return for denuclearization steps.

North Korea has recently stepped up calls on the United States to make concessions in the negotiations and speculation has been growing that North Korea could launch a satellite or longer-range ballistic missile if the United States continues to show little sign of accepting demands by Pyongyang in the near future.

"There is certain hostility, there's no question about it," Trump admitted.

In the latest sign of irritation on the side of North Korea, Kim Song, North Korean ambassador to the United Nations, said Saturday in a statement, "We do not need to have lengthy talks with the United States now and denuclearization is already gone out of the negotiating table," according to Reuters news agency.

The ambassador was also quoted as saying that the "sustained and substantial dialogue" sought by the United States was a "time-saving trick" to suit its domestic political agenda, a reference to Trump's 2020 re-election bid.

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