But the Filipino leader’s obscene words later led to his maiden meeting with the USA president being called off.
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President Duterte was accompanied by several Cabinet members for the 7 pm courtesy call to the Lao president.
Duterte was answering a reporter’s question about how he meant to explain the extrajudicial killings to Obama, before boarding a plane to Laos for the summit. Duterte also threatened earlier to pull the Philippines out of the United Nations over criticism that his crackdown on the illegal drug trade has led to a wave of extrajudicial killings.
“The areas that we believe we have robust, strong cooperation with them, we are not going to just simply throw that aside”.
“When the president of the Philippines insulted our president, it was appropriate in a very low-key way to say: sorry, no meeting”, she told reporters on her campaign plane.
“Clearly, he’s a colorful guy”, Obama said. “We know the other side has expressed concern over the remarks of President Duterte”, he said.
President Barack Obama says Laotians have been living under the “shadow of war” for four decades.
The two countries are treaty allies and Washington has strongly backed Manila’s calls for China to abide by a recent ruling over the South China Sea, which the Philippines won.
Duterte has been in the news because of intemperate remarks he made about President Barack Obama ahead of the summit.
SUITED UP President Rodrigo Duterte (left photo) is seen wearing a suit for the first time, as he attends the meetings of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Vientiane, Laos on Wednesday.
Obama says critics complain that the US shouldn’t be meddling in other people’s business and that America has its own problems to confront. During his two terms at the helm of affairs in the White House, President Obama has effected a rebalancing of the US’ foreign policy with 60 per cent of its strategic assets being redeployed in the Asia-Pacific region.
Mr Duterte won the presidency with his hard-line policy to eradicate drugs and some 2,400 people have died in anti-drug operations since he took office in June. And then, an ugly personal outburst that prompted Obama to cancel a meeting with the new leader of the Philippines, an ally the United States will need in the coming contest with China for regional influence.
Aside from his deadly record, Duterte’s disdain for statecraft, irreverence and bluntly frank and profane language would likely weigh on ASEAN, a conservative group steeped in tradition, protocol and nuanced rhetoric. Philippine-China ties were strained under Duterte’s predecessors because of territorial conflicts in the South China Sea.
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Former U.S. officials said China would be pleased by the U.S. -Philippines friction.
