Earlier on Tuesday, it was reported that President Obama cancelled his first meeting with Duterte after the blunt-spoken Duterte described him as a “son of a bitch”.
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However, diplomats say strains with longtime ally the Philippines could compound Washington’s difficulties in forging a united front with Southeast Asian partners on the geostrategic jostle with Beijing over the South China Sea.
Instead, Obama plans to meet South Korean President Park Geun-hye on Tuesday, said Ned Price, spokesman for the White House National Security Council – a meeting where the response to North Korea’s latest missile tests is expected to be on the agenda.
On Tuesday, Duterte expressed regret over the remarks, but the damage was already done.
“I think it is important for the entire region and it is important for the United States”, he said.
A summit of Southeast Asian leaders to discuss issues ranging from terrorism to South China Sea tensions opened Tuesday, overshadowed by the Philippine president’s intemperate comments in his debut appearance at the annual meeting.
The statement from Duterte’s spokesman said the “meeting has been mutually agreed upon to be moved to a later date”. “What I’ve instructed my team to do is talk to their Philippine counterparts to find out is this in fact a time where we can have some constructive, productive conversations”.
“Our primary intention is to chart an independent foreign policy while promoting ties with all nations, especially the United States with which we have had a longstanding partnership”, he said.
Obama is the first sitting US president to set foot in the impoverished, landlocked country, where for nine years the USA conducted a punishing, covert bombing campaign in an effort to cut off communist forces in neighboring Vietnam.
The United States will provide million over the next three years to help Laos clear unexploded ordinance, which have killed or injured more than 20,000 people since the 1970s. The summit will be followed by a series of other meetings on Wednesday and a summit Thursday between leaders from ASEAN and other countries, including the United States, China, Russia, India, South Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.
White House officials previously said Obama would confront the Philippines president about his country’s handling of drug dealers, including extra-judicial killings, or government executions without the benefit of judicial proceedings or due process. At least 700 of those deaths reportedly occurred during police operations.
In May, he called Pope Francis a “son of a whore”, although he later apologised, and called U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg a “gay son of a whore”.
The Philippines has been a key US ally in its dispute with China over the South China Sea, in which Washington blames Beijing for militarizing a vital global trade route and jeopardizing freedom of movement at sea and in the air.
China rejects those accusations and accuses the United States of ratcheting up tensions unnecessarily. He’s visited the country twice in his second term, and announced on a stop there in November the return of a U.S. military presence at a critical naval base on the South China Sea.
The 10-nation ASEAN comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
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An arbitration court in The Hague in July invalidated China’s territorial claims after a case was brought by the Philippines, a ruling Beijing refuses to recognise.
