“It’s a serious problem in the United States and around the world”, Obama said in a press conference in Laos after the 28th and 29th ASEAN Summit.
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The visitor made sure that he already talked on the matter with the President of Indonesia, Joko Widodo, during the summit of the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean), which concluded this Thursday in Lao.
“When you say something harsh (to the US President), of course all eyes will be on you, but for me, what matters is for Asean to stay united and make a stand based on facts so that Asean will remain as a respected organisation”, he said.
The bilateral relations between the Philippines and Laos started in 1955.
Duterte, who won the presidency earlier this year on his anti-drugs message, has stayed relentless in his bid to keep the Philippines narcotics-free, oftentimes lashing out and using offensive language against his detractors.
“I’m not fighting with America”.
Speaking in Laos, according to BBC, Obama said that every time Trump spoke it became clearer that the Republican contender was not qualified to be president.
At the same time, he said he was accepting the apology of News5 anchor Ed Lingao, who read a breaking news item that erroneously said Duterte called Obama “bastos” (rude).
He added, “But maybe if there are sharks around, then we can just feed them to the sharks”.
In a statement released Tuesday, Duterte admitted the “immediate cause” of the postponement of his meeting with Obama was his “strong comments to certain press questions that elicited concern and distress”.
“This is my ancestors being killed, so why now we are talking about human rights?”
Duterte had his outburst on Monday when he was defending his war on drugs that has killed at least 2,400 Filipinos. “Because I am not the president of the worldwide community, I’m the President of the Republic of the Philippines”, he said.
He also said he showed a picture of an atrocity during the U.S. pacification campaign in the southern Philippines at the beginning of the last century at the East Asia Summit in Laos that included Mr Obama, in order to stop criticism over human rights violations in the war on illegal drugs.
At a closed session later, officials said, Duterte threw out his prepared remarks and delivered an emotional speech on human rights, in which he accused industrialized countries of putting less-developed countries “under the yoke of imperialism”.
But on Thursday morning, Duterte was absent from meetings that Southeast Asian leaders held with Obama and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
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“Only China has offered to help us”, Duterte said on Friday.
