They said that in events like this, lower-ranking officials can not simply approach higher-ranking ones from other countries to bring up certain issues.
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Obama canceled a planned meeting over the insults, but later briefly met with Mr. Duterte on the sidelines of a regional summit in Laos, urging him to conduct his crime war “the right way”.
In a statement, the agency headed by Tourism Secretary Wanda Corazon Teo, welcomed President Rodrigo Duterte’s acceptance of the ASEAN chairmanship in 2017. His comments led to the cancellation of the meeting.
The acid-tongued Duterte yesterday insisted the Philippine expression “putang ina” should not be taken at face value, since it was “an ordinary expression (used) by everyone”.
“It means that there will be some interdiction by their armed forces and the armed forces of the Philippines”, he said, adding that the leaders of the three countries “have made a decision to end this problem once and for all”. “It’s not son of a whore”, he explained.
Washington recently expressed concern over the killings but Duterte, in typical fashion, later dismissed this and lashed out at US ambassador to the Philippines, labelling him a “gay son of a whore”.
Duterte sparked a storm on the eve of an Asian summit this week when he appeared to label Obama a “son of a whore”, prompting the USA president to cancel a planned meeting. Over 2,800 people have been killed in this crackdown so far.
“I got really angry about these threats over this human rights issue. We are not too uptight about state protocol, (which can) sometimes give headaches to the presidential staff and security officers”, he said at the start of the bilateral meeting.
Obama canceled a meeting with Mr. 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.
The Philippine leader has become famous for his profane outbursts, and has hurled expletives at Pope Francis and the USA ambassador Philip Goldberg.
On Friday, Duterte slammed Ki-moon for raising the issue of human rights in the Philippines before the summit in Laos.
Arriving at the Davao International Airport past midnight Saturday from Indonesia, Duterte said the Constitution guarantees the right of people to be informed and “a media that is there to found out the true and accurate – you portray history”.
“As the presenter who read the erroneous breaking story, I apologize to the President, to the public, and to my colleagues for that error”, he added. I am the President of the Republic of the Philippines, not the republic of the worldwide community.
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Despite this, Duterte cited that he accepted the public apology of TV5 news anchor Ed Lingao who made a breaking news report about it but later on realized that the report was erroneous.
