“Do not just throw questions”.
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The Philippine President has faced condemnation from human rights campaigners, diplomats and the United Nations for inciting a war on drugs.
Almost 600,000 people have also surrendered to authorities, further overwhelming the Philippines’ already overcrowded jails.
The feisty president said he does not respond to “anybody but to the people of Republic of the Philippines”.
“I want to be sure that the setting is right and the timing is right for us to have the best conversation possible”.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte expressed regret today for a tirade against Barack Obama in which he called the United States leader a “son of a whore”.
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.
Mr Duterte dismisses comparisons with US Republican runner Donald Trump.
The United States announced on Tuesday it would provide an additional $90 million over the next three years to help Laos, heavily bombed during the Vietnam War, clear unexploded ordnance, which have killed or injured more than 20,000 people.
“I don’t give a sh*t about anybody observing my behaviour,”he said”.
“You people are too impressed by America, I won’t hesitate to kick him [Obama] in front of everybody”.
Obama said he had heard about the comment and instructed his aides to determine whether it would still be productive to hold the face-to-face meeting.
“Both countries benefit from effective cooperation on a variety of issues, including maritime security”.
It is in this context that Washington is seeking to use “due process” and “human rights” as a weapon to pressure Manila to promote its war drive against China.
Duterte, in his remarks Monday, also blamed the USA for causing numerous country’s problems, including instability on the southern island of Mindanao. Mr. Duterte said, adding that the Philippines had not received an apology from the United States for misdeeds committed during its colonisation of the Philippines.
It is also the first visit by a sitting USA president to Laos, which the United States secretly carpet bombed for almost a decade in the Vietnam War, killing tens of thousands of people. I don’t have any master except the Filipino.
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte says in a statement that he regrets that earlier comments “came across as a personal attack” against US President Barack Obama.
The development surfaced as the Southeast Asian leaders, including Barack Obama, have reached Laos for annual ASEAN summits. The Philippines president has been under the scanner ever since over 2,000 suspected drug dealers and users were killed.
Obama later canceled a bilateral meeting he was scheduled to have with Duterte in Vientiane.
“You must be respectful. If you are that disrespectful, son of a whore, then I will just leave you”. He applied the same moniker to an Australian missionary who was gang-raped and killed, and even to Pope Francis, even though the Philippines is a heavily Catholic nation.
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Duterte has previously also branded the U.S. ambassador to Manila a “son of a whore” – a term the acid-tongued former prosecutor commonly uses – and criticised the USA over its own track record of police killings.
