AKIPRESS.COM - New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern says she regrets sharing an anecdote about her recent meeting with US President Donald Trump with her friends.

Ms Ardern met Mr Trump at the Apec summit in Vietnam earlier this month.

On Sunday, a local comedian told journalists Ms Ardern said Mr Trump had mistaken her for the wife of Canada's leader, Justin Trudeau.

Ms Ardern denied this, and said she had merely spoken about an outside observer's impression of the meeting, BBC reported.

Tom Sainsbury, a friend of Ms Ardern's, had told local radio: "I don't know if I should be saying this, but she said that Donald Trump was confused for a good amount of time thinking that she was Justin Trudeau's wife."

The interview sparked headlines in New Zealand that Mr Trump had not known who Ms Ardern was.

Ms Ardern later denied this. In a New Zealand TV (TVNZ) interview on Monday, she said: "Someone observed that they thought that it happened, but in all my interactions, certainly President Trump didn't seem to have confused me when I interacted with him. But someone else observed this."

She would not specify who observed the meeting, but admitted she had shared the incident with a number of friends afterwards.