Tuesday’s summit was the first between Park and Obama since their last meeting held on the sidelines of the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, D.C.in March.
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Decades after US planes waged hundreds of thousands of bombing runs over Laos, President Barack Obama acknowledged that secret war and pledged $90 million in additional aid on Tuesday to help clear unexploded bombs still strewn across the country.
Under Aquino, the Philippines had forged closer military ties with the United States to deal with the China threat.
The U.S. dropped the bombs in a nine-year secret mission during the Vietnam War.
Now a fellow world leader has verbally attacked him, with Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte labelling him a “putang ina” – the Tagalog phrase for “son of a whore”.
PHILIPPINE President Rodrigo Duterte expressed regret Tuesday over his “son of a bitch” remark while referring to President Barack Obama, in a rare display of contrition by a politician whose wide arc of profanities has unabashedly targeted world figures including the pope and the United Nations chief. On Tuesday, Duterte expressed regret over the remarks, but the damage was already done. “He expressed his deep regard and affinity for President Obama and for the enduring partnership between our nations”.
Mr Duterte was responding to the US President’s promise to raise the issue of drug-related extra-judicial killings in the Philippines at their meeting.
In his typical loose-tongued style, Duterte said: “I do not have any master except the Filipino people, nobody but nobody”.
Obama’s time in Laos will be the final trip to Asia of his eight-year presidency, during which he has sought to refocus American military, political and economic resources on the region.
The booklet said that since Duterte took office 7,532 drug operations had been carried out, 12,972 pushers and users had been arrested, and police operations in July reduced crime by 49 percent from a year earlier.
The unusually open tensions between the United States and the Philippines, its former colony, threaten to overshadow the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and East Asia Summits in Laos from Tuesday to Thursday.
BARACK OBAMA cancelled his meeting with Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte after the controversial leader called him a “son of a whore”.
Although Duterte is fond of swearing – the man swore at the pope – it’s not every day that you hear a sitting president insult an ally.
Duterte has repeatedly poured scorn on critics, usually larding it with curses. Following the criticism, President Duterte turned down a meeting with U.N Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
“The United States and China are engaged across more areas than ever before”, Obama told delegates. China claims most of the South China Sea, through which more than $5 trillion of trade moves annually.
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The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan also have competing claims to the strategically vital waters, but have watched China expand its presence by building artificial islands in key locations.
