Duterte has previously also branded the USA ambassador to Manila a “son of a whore” – a term the acid-tongued former prosecutor commonly uses – and criticised the U.S. over its own track record of police killings.
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President Barack Obama has become the first sitting USA president to visit the isolated, landlocked Southeast Asian nation of Laos.
Since gaining power in June, Mr Duterte has engaged in a vicious war on drugs, which has seen around 2,400 people killed with impunity by hit squads.
Responding to questions from local reporters Monday about how he would react if Mr. Obama raised the human-rights issue, Mr. Duterte appeared angry and blamed the USA -which ran the Philippines as a colony until 1946-for causing the country’s problems.
He called President Obama a “son of a b****” for challenging his authority following his encouragement of extrajudicial killings.
Mr Duterte also said his country had not received an apology for alleged misdeeds committed during the USA colonisation of the Philippines in the last century.
The freakish rift with the leader of a US treaty ally was the most glaring example of how Obama has frequently found himself bound to foreign countries and leaders whose ties to the USA are critical even if their values sharply diverge.
Before flying to Laos, Duterte bluntly said: “I am a president of a sovereign state and we have long ceased to be a colony”.
Obama notes at his news conference before leaving China that he will be the first US president to visit the southeast Asian country. But I always want to make sure that if I’m having a meeting that it’s actually productive and we’re getting something done, ‘ he told reporters in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou.
Asked after arriving in the Laos capital of Vientiane whether the meeting would go ahead, Duterte replied: “Maybe, if I feel good”.
‘Until the (last) drug manufacturer is killed, we will continue and I will continue’.
Duterte spoke before he was scheduled to fly to Laos for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit.
“We’ve got to do it the right way”, the United States leader went on to say.
Mr. Obama also will use his two days in Laos to reassure leaders that he can deliver on a new trade deal.
Duterte said his country hadn’t received an apology for alleged misdeeds committed during the USA colonization of the Philippines in the 1900s and blamed the United States for causing the unrest on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao.
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The president said the USA hopes to develop economic ties with Laos, adding, “As we’re trying to build trust, a lot of work can be done around the war legacy issues”. Duterte, however, has repeatedly brushed off criticisms from the United Nations and elsewhere.
