“I think I’ve already offered my opinion”, Obama said. It’s the last of 10 trips Obama paid as president to Asia, where Obama lived as a youngster with his mother in Indonesia.
Advertisement
Obama also said he believes the media have overblown the significance of controversial incidents during his Asia trip, including a scuffle over how the president exited Air Force One in China and insulting remarks made by the president of the Philippines.
Mr Trump and rival Hillary Clinton had taken questions from military veterans.
A U.S. Supreme Court seat vacant since February 13 likely will remain unfilled until next year and a sweeping Pacific free-trade deal negotiated by Obama will be on hold, if not doomed. That deal is awaiting ratification in the U.S. Congress. Asked to acknowledge he wouldn’t be able to fulfill his campaign promise to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center, Obama pushed back.
Ive already said he is really very much of a leader, I mean you can say oh isnt that a awful thing. the man has very strong control over a county, now its a very different system and I dont happen to like the system but certainly in that system he has been a leader far more than our President has been a leader.
The two leaders interacted briefly on Wednesday night during a dinner for leaders gathered here in the Lao capital for a summit, but exchanged only “pleasantries”, according to a White House official.
“I don’t take these comments personally, because it seems as if this is a phrase he’s used repeatedly directed at the pope and others”, Obama said of the slur. In a concluding joint statement, the leaders were expected to issue a mild rebuke to China without referencing it by name or mentioning a recent worldwide arbitration ruling against Beijing.
President Barack Obama says the US wants to work constructively with Southeast Asian nations to lower tensions with China in the South China Sea.
“I realize this raises tensions”, Obama said earlier as he met with ASEAN leaders, referring to a recent global arbitration ruling against China on the maritime dispute.
On his final day in Asia, Obama met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, whose help Obama is seeking to galvanize further action on climate change, especially among developing countries.
Advertisement
But addressing leaders of Southeast Asian nations in Laos on Thursday, he said it was also “key to a peaceful and prosperous future for the world”, and voiced his hope that whoever succeeds him in the White House next year would take it forward. Without naming Pakistan he said that a single country in South Asia was spreading agents of terror in India and the region.
