Duterte’s remarks prompted Obama to cancel a scheduled meeting with Duterte last Thursday on the sidelines of the Laos meetings.
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Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has told reporters he informed Barack Obama he did not call him a “son of a whore” in a short meeting.
Duterte this week called Obama a “son of a bitch” and said he would not be lectured over extrajudicial killings in the Philippines’ drug war. “I never confronted Obama-I don’t know him-before taking off from Davao”, said the President.
“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.
“Somehow behavior that in normal times we would consider completely unacceptable and outrageous becomes normalized” during an election campaign, Obama said Thursday at the conclusion of a southeast Asian summit meeting in Laos.
The outburst on Monday was in response to being told Obama planned to raise concerns about his war of drugs.
He also appealed to Obama not to misjudge Duterte for the way he speaks as he has often been discredited by his critics.
The encounter took place in a holding room just before a gala dinner at a regional summit, the Philippines officials said.
Tensions stemming from a public outburst by Duterte before the summit overshadowed a gathering where Obama sought to focus on his military and economic rebalance to Asia and give reassurances on the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact, which faces a hard ratification process in Congress.
Duterte, who assumed the presidency in June, has had an uneasy relationship with the US, his country’s longtime treaty ally. Over 2,800 people have been killed in this crackdown so far.
He vowed in the campaign that so many bodies would be dumped in Manila Bay that the fish there would grow fat from feeding on them.
Duterte is expected to participate in the summit’s closing ceremony, during which Laos will pass on the rotational presidency to the Philippines, which will be in charge in in 2017 as ASEAN will mark its 50th anniversary then. “Also gave a statement before, several weeks ago, about the human rights violation”.
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Duterte said he had clarified his stance to Obama when they met in Laos.
