U.S. President Barack Obama holds a bilateral meeting with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi alongside the ASEAN Summits in Vientiane, Laos.
Advertisement
Obama said the United States and Southeast Asian nations gathered in Laos have advanced a vision of an open, competitive economic system in which all nations play by the same rules.
The comment Duterte made against the president was around the fact that he would be questioned by Obama about his crackdown on suspected drug dealers – 2,000 people have been killed since June 30 nearly immediately after he became president – brought up during his speech on Monday in which he called Obama an “S.O.B.” and that he would cuss at him if he asked him questions about potential human rights abuses.
Mr Duterte’s outburst came after at a press conference where he told reporters he would not accept Mr Obama raising any concerns about the war on drugs in the Philippines. But he says the USA wants these disputes to be resolved peacefully and will keep working to help make that happen.
US President Barack Obama warned Thursday an worldwide tribunal’s ruling that China’s sweeping claims to the South China Sea had no legal basis was “binding”, after Beijing vowed to ignore the verdict.
Setting aside a prepared speech, Duterte spoke for more than five minutes about human rights and his campaign against drugs during the East Asian Summit in the Laotian capital of Vientiane, according to one Indonesian diplomat at the meeting.
“You must be respectful”.
“We have to give him time because he’s used to (being) a local executive – you do what you want, you say what you want”, he said.
“Son of a bitch, I will swear at you at that forum”, he said on Monday, when asked how he would respond to questions about the spate of killings amid his government’s anti-drug campaign.
He added that such choice words were “a habit, a way of speaking for him”.
President Duterte, known for his controversial remarks, had previously called US Secretary of State John Kerry “crazy” and referred to Pope Francis as the “son of a whore”. “They were the last persons to leave the holding room”, Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay said, insisting that the countries’ relationship was “firm, very strong”.
Marciano Paynor, chief Philippine protocol officer and incoming Philippine ambassador to the United States, said Duterte was learning “quick” during the summit, his worldwide debut since becoming president on June 30. Police also recorded 1,391 deaths during the same period which are still being investigated.
The United Nations special rapporteur on summary executions has warned incitement to kill is a crime under worldwide law.
Advertisement
“More people will be killed, plenty will be killed until the last pusher is out of the streets”, Duterte said on Monday.
