Philippine president regrets remark about Obama

“We look forward to ironing out differences arising out of national priorities and perceptions, and working in mutually responsible ways for both countries”, his statement said.

Hours after an expletive-laden outburst as he headed for Laos, warning Mr. Obama against questioning him about his war on illegal drugs, the White House announced their scheduled tete-a-tete was off.

“Who does he think he is?” How about you? I have so many questions also about human rights to ask you.

At heart, what Duterte and many Filipinos want is better treatment from our former colonial masters and current allies. “Son of a bitch, I will swear at you”. Do not just throw questions.

For nine years, the USA conducted a punishing, covert bombing campaign on landlocked Laos in an effort to cut off communist forces in neighboring Vietnam. He’s visited the country twice in his second term, and announced on a stop there in November the return of a USA military presence at a critical naval base on the South China Sea.

The comments came after a journalist asked Duterte how he would explain the Philippines’s use of extrajudicial killings. “He’s the most powerful president of any country on the planet”, Duterte said, after arriving in Vientiane, Laos, for a summit of Southeast Asian nations, in which Obama is also taking part.

Duterte called U.S. Ambassador to the Philippines Philip Goldberg “a gay son of a bitch”, and then a month later, he turned around and said roughly the same thing about Obama.

In his speech Monday, Duterte also blamed the United States for causing the unrest on the southern Philippines island of Mindanao.

Manila has been aligned with the United States 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. “We are going to work together to make sure we’re closing loopholes and make them even more effective”.

Q: Sir, there have been concerns on extrajudicial killings, sir, and you will meet leaders. “There’s a protocol for that”, Duterte said. He had been scheduled to meet Obama separately. Obama had said he planned to raise the issue in his first meeting with Duterte, but the Philippine leader insisted he was only listening to his own country’s people.

National Security Council Spokesperson, Ned Price, made the announcement through the White House press pool, that Obama would not be holding a bilateral meeting with Duterte. More than 2,000 people have been killed since June 30, when he took office after winning the election on a promise to fight crime and corruption.

“Double your efforts. Triple them, if need be”.

The area where Mr. Duterte has bristled most has been criticism of his drug war.

China’s assertions to the area, where it has reclaimed thousands of acres of land and boosted its naval presence, are often a focus of Asean summits as they overlap those of Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei, and Malaysia. Large swathes of land are too risky to farm, and even today, they cause hundreds of deaths and injuries every year – and 40 percent of the victims are children, Mines Advisory Group International says.