The ASEAN summits and related meetings are also seen as notable for the participation of US President Barack Obama, marking the first visit of a US leader to Laos. More than 2,000 suspected drug pushers and users have been killed since Duterte launched a war on drugs after taking office on June 30. I do not have any master except the Filipino people, nobody but nobody.
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Just how far this framework of cooperation within competition will carry over into post-Obama US-China relations remains a question, with most analysts anticipating testier bilateral relations no matter who lands in the White House.
Duterte said Obama should not question him about extrajudicial killings, or, as he put it, “son of a bitch, I will swear at you” when they meet in Laos.
Duterte had said Cayetano would take over as Foreign secretary, replacing Perfecto Yasay Jr., when the one-year ban on the appointment of losing election candidates ends.
Obama was asked at a news conference in China on Monday whether he intends to meet Duterte, as planned, at a gathering in Laos this week of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
An arbitration court in The Hague ruled in July that China had no historic title over the waters of the South China Sea and had infringed on the rights of the Philippines, which brought the case under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea.
He pointed to the killing of Muslim Moros more than a century ago during a USA pacification campaign in the southern Philippines, blaming the wounds of the past as “the reason why (the south) continues to boil” with separatist insurgencies.
Obama plans to push for closer economic ties with Laos and Southeast Asia, and raise human rights abuses in the one-party communist state, which suppresses freedom of expression and the media.
In his Asean meetings, Mr. Duterte earlier said, he was ready to discuss terrorism, human trafficking and drugs with the other leaders.
The White House largely holds the same view.
If you live in China, or are getting your news from China’s officials media outlets, though, you would have no idea that Obama expressed any criticism during his September 3 meeting with Xi, or even that the CNN interview happened at all.
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The visit “offers an opportunity for the U.S. leader to advance the so-called U.S. pivot to Asia” – Obama’s call for less emphasis on Europe, said Curtis S. Chin, former U.S. Ambassador to the Asian Development Bank and Asia Fellow at the Milken Institute, an economic think tank based in California.
