Acknowledging the scars of a secret war, President Obama on Tuesday said the United States has a “moral obligation” to help this isolated Southeast Asian nation heal and vowed to reinvigorate relations with a country with rising strategic importance to the U.S.
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The Philippines says President Rodrigo Duterte regrets insulting Barack Obama.
Park says a nuclear test and continued missile launches are fundamentally threatening the security of the Korean Peninsula. “God, do not do it”. You must be respectful.
Why is Duterte doing this? “He just said, ‘You must run because it’s about time that Mindanao would have its own president, ‘” Duterte said.
“The United States dropped more than 2 million tons of bombs here in Laos”.
White House officials previously said Obama would confront Duterte about his country’s handling of drug dealers, including alleged extrajudicial killings.
The Philippines’ Department of Foreign Affairs added Duterte had “a deep regard and affinity for President Obama and for the enduring partnership between our nations”.
Later on Tuesday, Duterte issued a statement, expressing regret for his undiplomatic remarks.
“I also know that the remnants of war continue to shatter lives here in Laos”, he said, noting that numerous clusters bombs dropped by USA warplanes during the Vietnam War remained unexploded.
Duterte had previously also branded the United States ambassador to Manila a “gay son of a whore”, and sought to taint the reputation of Pope Francis’s mother in similar fashion.
Philippine President said he was looking forward to meeting Obama at a later date and to “ironing out differences arising out of national priorities and perceptions, and working in mutually responsible ways for both countries”.
Duterte responded: “I am a president of a sovereign state and we have long ceased to be a colony”. The insult was made more egregious because of who the target was – President Barack Obama.
He pointed to the killing of Muslim Moros more than a century ago during a USA pacification campaign in the southern Philippines, blaming the wounds of the past as “the reason why (the south) continues to boil” with separatist insurgencies.
Duterte has taken a more conciliatory stance toward China than his predecessor.
Manila has been aligned with the United States in its dispute with China over the South China Sea, in which Washington blames Beijing for militarising a vital global trade route and jeopardising freedom of movement at sea and in the air.
Obama’s project to shift US diplomatic and military resources from the Middle East to Asia has been dubbed his Asia pivot. -Philippine relations blossomed, expressed disappointment over the aborted meeting with the U.S.
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“That conflict was another reminder that, whatever the cause, whatever our intentions, war inflicts a bad toll, especially on innocent men, women and children”, Obama said.
