Yasay said the two leaders met in a holding room just before a gala dinner at the summit.
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The brief meeting took a little sting out of the soured relationship caused by Mr. Duterte’s intemperate language, and Philippine Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay said he was happy the two leaders had met.
There were more than 10 million Filipinos living overseas in 2013, according to the most recent official data, and cash that they send home is a major source of foreign-currency earnings for the country. “I am the president of a sovereign country and I am not answerable to anyone except the Filipino people”. “Putang ina, I will swear at you in that forum”, Duterte said, using the Tagalog phrase for “son of a bitch”.
“You must be respectful”, Duterte said, after a reporter asked him how he might respond to criticism from Obama about his approach to combating crime.
From trade dependence to money from workers overseas, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte can hardly afford to pick a fight with the USA given his country’s ties to the world’s largest economy.
President Barack Obama warned Thursday against becoming immune to Donald Trump’s more outlandish statements, arguing that the stakes of the USA presidential contest were too high for Americans to tune out.
“I realize this raises tensions”, Obama said earlier as he met with ASEAN leaders, referring to a recent worldwide arbitration ruling against China on the maritime dispute.
On the day he was sworn into office, June 30, Mr. Duterte urged people living in a Manila slum to kill drug addicts in their community.
Obama’s speech apparently provoked Duterte to make an impromptu speech in response, sources said. Do not just throw away questions and statements.
“When I think back to the time I spent here as a boy, I can’t help but be struck by the extraordinary progress that’s been made by the region in the decades since, even if there’s still a lot of work to be done”, Obama said.
The article did not say how long their meeting was but that it was mutually agreed upon. Obama then decided that in light of Duterte’s comments, the two probably couldn’t have a “productive” discussion during his final presidential trip to Asia and canceled the meeting.
Obama was speaking to about 350 young leaders from the 10 Association of Southeast Asian Nations member countries. Obama called off the meeting.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte skipped meetings at the summit Thursday because of a migraine, his spokesman said.
Duterte has encouraged vigilante killings of drug dealers, and has said that “plenty will be killed” before the problem is solved and the crackdown ends.
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Manila, Sept7:Days after his “Putang ina” comment on Obama, the firebrand Filipino leader has hit out at Abu Sayyaf, an ISIS affiliate Islamic terror group operating in parts of Philippines.
