The president sent his Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay to lead the Filipino delegation in ASEAN’s meetings with India and the United States, and in the East Asia Summit.
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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.
“People start thinking behavior that in normal times we would consider completely unacceptable and outrageous becomes normalized”, Obama said during a news conference at the tail end of his visit to Laos.
Earlier On Tuesday, Mr Obama had cancelled planned talks after the abusive slur from Duterte.
Teo said the chance encounter of the two leaders at the Gala Dinner for ASEAN and Dialog Partners should boost the possibility of a more substantive meeting in the near future that may impact bilateral relations and Asian regional security.
On Monday, hours before arriving in Laos, Duterte told Philippine reporters he wouldn’t accept questions from Obama about extrajudicial killings that have occurred during his crackdown on suspected drug dealers and users. “Check it out. Check it out”, Duterte recalled telling Obama in a holding room.
A Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs spokesman, Charles Joe, also said Obama and Duterte met in the holding room. Do not just throw questions and statements.
The two leaders interacted briefly on Wednesday night during a dinner for leaders gathered here in the Lao capital for a summit, but exchanged only “pleasantries”, according to a White House official.
Obama cancelled a meeting with Duterte after the firebrand leader unleashed a barrage of criticism of the USA president, saying he would not be lectured about human rights over his crackdown on narcotics, which has seen police and shadowy assassins kill almost 3,000 people.
Releasing the images, Duterte’s government said they had evidence China was taking steps to begin dredging – a major escalation.
His outburst was prompted by USA assertions that Obama planned to raise the issue of Duterte’s war on crime that has claimed 3,000 lives in just over two months.
The American President further said, “And it certainly has no impact in terms of power”.
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On the day he was sworn into office, June 30, Duterte urged people living in a Manila slum to kill drug addicts in their community.
