Despite the cancellation, the pair did meet before a dinner at the ASEAN summit – of which Mr Duterte was reported by the Star Online: “I was ready (for Obama)”.
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Duterte, who called Obama a “son of a bitch”, said in a statement that he regretted “it came across as a personal attack on the USA president”. He said Asian leaders would be puzzled by Trump’s remarks, and Americans would know who to choose as president on November 8.
The showdown was a fitting climax to a brutal few days of diplomacy that began with the famously acid-tongued Duterte branding Obama a “son of a whore”.
Duterte is expected to participate in the summit’s closing ceremony, during which Laos will pass on the rotational presidency to the Philippines, which will be in charge in in 2017 as ASEAN will mark its 50th anniversary then.
Duterte missed a scheduled one-on-one with Obama, who postponed the meeting after the brash Philippine leader called him a “son of a bitch” in a pre-departure speech and threatened to swear at him if the US leader raised concerns over Duterte’s bloody crackdown on illegal drugs.
In a terse statement, the White House said only that “Obama had a brief discussion with President Duterte before the ASEAN Gala Dinner in the leaders’ hold space”.
“I said that, but not in relation to Obama, I’m not fighting with America”.
In August, President Duterte said that the Philippines might leave the United Nations after it called for an end to a surge in drug-related extrajudicial killings in the country.
“I do not have any master except the Filipino people, nobody but nobody”.
Obama said during the heat of an election “outrageous becomes normalized and people begin thinking we should begin grading on a curve”.
“And we know that democracy can flourish in Asia because we’ve seen it thrive, from Japan and South Korea, to Taiwan”, he said.
American investors in the Philippines today warned that President Rodrigo Duterte’s brutal drugs war and foul-mouthed tirades, including branding United States leader Barack Obama a “son of a whore”, could hit foreign investment. According to reports, Duterte instead opted to converse with the Russian PM Medvedev who appeared to be enjoying each others’ company, clinking their glasses of red wine several times.
“You must be respectful”. More than 2,000 people have killed in the crackdown since he took office on June 30.
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Duterte delivered the insult in his native Tagalog tongue, just as he had with the statement about Obama, which he now claims he never made. I can’t say how long they met.
