“President Obama will not be holding a bilateral meeting with President Duterte of the Philippines”, National Security Council spokesman Ned Price said.
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Obama is now in Laos, a communist Southeast Asian country of almost 7 million people, for a three-day visit centered around the annual meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
But that bright spot aside, his trip to China has offered reminders that since Obama took office in 2009 – and especially since Xi emerged as a nationalist leader after taking office in 2012 – Sino-US relations have worsened.
‘I do not have any master except the Filipino people, nobody but nobody.
Killing someone without a trial is obviously concerning, especially when the reason is nonviolent drug offenses. He’s said it’s not an anti-American gesture but a means to bring attention to racial injustice. “I am the president of a sovereign country and I am not answerable to anyone except the Filipino people”, Duterte told a news conference Monday. “Putang ina” I will swear at you in that forum”.
Last week, Duterte had said that Obama needs to “listen”, then speak, at the upcoming summit.
The White House said Mr Obama cancelled the talks in response to the “vulgar” comments, and will instead meet with South Korean President Park Geun-hye.
Obama said he had heard about the comment and instructed his aides to determine whether it would still be “constructive” to hold the face-to-face meeting.
“Clearly he’s a colorful guy”, Mr. Obama said during a news conference at the end of a summit of the Group of 20 major economies in China.
Duterte said the United States had no right to question his country, since it has not apologized for aggression during the American colonization of the Philippines.
“The issue of how we approach fighting crime and drug trafficking is a serious one for all of us”.
The Philippines president was set to meet Barack Obama on Tuesday, but it appears the talks are now in jeopardy.
More than 2,400 people have been killed since Duterte took office on June 30.
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Asked to respond during a news conference after the Group of 20 Summit in China, Obama said he had been told of Duterte’s comments, but the USA president shrugged it off as another in a line of “colorful statements” from Duterte. “I want to make sure that the setting is right and the timing is right for us to have the best conversation possible”. Obama says “we have deep commitments” to account for those lost during the war. Everybody has a awful record of extra-judicial killing. “We will not stop until the last drug lord, the last financier, and the last pusher have surrendered or put behind bars – or below the ground, if they so wish”, Duterte said during his State of the Nation speech on July 25. In May, Duterte called the pope a “son of a whore”.
