President Barack Obama canceled what would have been his first meeting with Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte, after Duterte described Obama in vulgar terms, a White House spokesman said on Tuesday. In August, two United Nations human rights experts said Mr Duterte’s directive for police and the public to kill suspected drug traffickers amounted to “incitement to violence and killing, a crime under worldwide law”. “You must be respectful”. “So … people who live in glass houses should not” throw stones”, Duterte said, the Associated Press reported. “Son of a b***h, I will swear at you”.
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“President Duterte explained that the press reports that President Obama would “lecture” him on extrajudicial killings led to his strong comments, which in turn elicited concern”, the Philippines government said.
President Rodrigo Duterte has responded very positively to the invitation of Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang for him to visit Vietnam during their bilateral meeting Tuesday on the sidelines of the 28th and 29th Association of Southeast Asian Nations Summit now being held.
“We. regret [the remarks] came across as a personal attack on the USA president”, Duterte’s office said in a statement issued Tuesday.
Following the cancellation of the meeting, President Duterte said on Tuesday that he regretted his comments about President Obama.
In response, President Obama-still the steady, “no-drama Obama” he was on his historic campaign eight years ago-said he had told his staff to find out if this was a good time for “some constructive, productive conversations”.
But President Duterte later seemed to regret his words.
Recently, Philippine police chief Ronald Dela Rosa testified before a congressional budget committee, claiming Duterte’s witch hunt has so far claimed the lives of more than 2,400 people, including ten police officers.
In his Tuesday statement, Duterte thanked Obama for emphasizing “the importance for China to abide by its obligations under worldwide law” at an earlier Group of 20 summit.
During the visit, I will also have the opportunity to interact with the leaders of participating countries to discuss bilateral issues of mutual concern. “We’ve got to do it the right way”, Obama said.
“We are going to work diligently together with the most recent United Nations sanctions, ” Obama told reporters after meeting with Park. “And my expectation, my hope is that it could be dealt with constructively”.
The United States also sought to ensure there was no enduring fall-out with one of its most important allies in Asia and former colony.
He announced on Tuesday that Washington would provide an additional $90 million over the next three years to help Laos, heavily bombed during the Vietnam War, clear unexploded ordnance, which has killed or wounded more than 20,000 people.
As I’ve always said, the best form of diplomacy is cash.
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Duterte insisted he would not take orders from the U.S., a former colonial ruler of the Philippines, and did not care about how he was perceived.
