Obama will now meet South Korea President Park Geun-hye.
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Obama and Duterte are supposed to meet on Tuesday, but after hearing about Duterte’s threatening remarks, the US president is having doubts that the meeting will be useful.
“What is certainly true is that the issues of how we approach fighting crime and drug trafficking is a serious one for all of us, and we’ve got to do it the right way”.
Responding to question about how he meant to explain the extrajudicial killings to the US President, before boarding a plane to Laos for the Association of South-east Asian Nations summit (ASEAN), he said, “You must be respectful”.
Obama arrived in Vientiane on Monday evening after participating in the G20 Summit in China’s city of Hangzhou. “We will not stop until the last drug lord, the last financier, and the last pusher have surrendered or put behind bars – or below the ground, if they so wish”, Duterte said during his State of the Nation speech on July 25.
The rest are “deaths under investigation”, a term human rights activists in the Philippines say is a euphemism for vigilante and extrajudicial killings. Using the Tagalog phrase for “son of a bitch”, he then said: “Putang ina, I will swear at you in the forum”.
The two were scheduled a sit-down during a summit of Southeast Asian Nations when President Duterte, speaking to reporters on Monday, directed an expletive at Mr. Obama.
Mr Obama said it was clear any meeting with him would not be that productive.
The statement came in reaction to the information President Obama was to address the alleged extrajudicial killings during the anti-drug campaign in the Philippines that has already claimed 2,400 lives. He’s lashed out at statements from the United Nations and the U.S., responding to comments from U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg by calling him a homosexual.
The Philippines has been a key US ally in its dispute with China over the South China Sea, in which Washington blames Beijing for militarizing a vital global trade route and jeopardizing freedom of movement at sea and in the air.
Duterte said the crackdowns would continue.
Mr Duterte added his country had not received an apology for alleged misdeeds committed during the USA colonisation of the Philippines in the last century. “I want to make sure that the setting is right and the timing is right for us to have the best conversation possible”.
The two men were due to meet for the first time on Tuesday afternoon at the ASEAN summit in Laos.
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This after the ignorant leader basically cussed at him.
