Mr. Obama said during a news conference on the last day of the G-20 economic summit in China that he had heard about the comment and instructed his aides to determine whether now was the time to have “constructive, productive conversations” in a face-to-face meeting with Duterte.
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Rhodes told reporters he will meet with Shui Meng Ng on Thursday while Obama is still in Laos.
“Who is he (Obama) to confront me?”
The U.S.is one of the Philippines’ largest trading partners and a key security ally in its fight against terrorism in the country’s south. Manila also needs Washington’s help in dealing with a more assertive China in the disputed South China Sea. “Until the [last] drug manufacturer is killed, we will continue and I will continue”, he said on Monday.
A day after announcing $90 million to survey and remove unexploded ordinance, Obama visited a US-backed NGO which helps provide prosthetics to the tens of thousands maimed by USA munitions. “I am the president of a sovereign country and I am not answerable to anyone except the Filipino people”, Duterte said Monday, CNN reported.
Mr. Obama and Duterte had been scheduled to meet Tuesday on the summit’s sidelines.
When Duterte was running for office, he promised an all-out war on drugs.
Aside from Obama, Duterte’s other seatmate would be UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
“It’s more than we were expecting”, added Simon Rea, Laos country director for Mines Advisory Group, an aid group which receives the majority of its funding for mine and bomb clearance operations in Laos from the U.S.
President Barack Obama is blaming the failure to win passage of a multinational trade agreement on the fact that it’s political season in the U.S. Philippines-China ties were strained under Duterte’s predecessors due to territorial conflicts in the South China Sea. The Philippines relies on the U.S. providing a balance of power against China in the South China Sea, where in recent years Beijing has grown increasingly aggressive, posing a direct threat to the Philippines’ control of its own maritime resources.
The Philippines, which has overlapping claims with China to islands and atolls in the sea, won an worldwide ruling against Beijing in July.
The verdict was widely seen as a sweeping victory for the Philippines, which filed the suit under the previous administration of president Benigno Aquino III. But Duterte has cast doubt on that strategy.
“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.
US has a “moral obligation” to help Laos.
Other leaders to come for an East Asia summit on Thursday include those from Australia, India and New Zealand.
It is also the first visit by a sitting U.S. president to Laos, which the United States secretly carpet bombed for almost a decade in the Vietnam War, killing tens of thousands of people.
In fields across Xieng Khouang province, MAG technicians root out the bombs and carry out controlled detonations to “destroy the bombies, to make these areas farmable and safe again”, says Rhea.
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Obama stops short of apologizing..
