Obama
cancels meeting with Philippines' Duterte after insult
By Roberta Rampton |
VIENTIANE
President Barack
Obama canceled what would have been his first meeting with Filipino
President Rodrigo Duterte, after Duterte described Obama in vulgar
terms, a White House spokesman said on Tuesday.
Duterte, a
plain-spoken populist known for his colorful remarks and his campaign
against illegal drugs in which thousands of people have died,
described Obama as a “son of a bitch” to reporters on Monday, a
day ahead of the planned meeting in Laos, where South Asian leaders
are meeting for annual summits.
Obama learned about
the insult as he emerged from the Group of 20 summit in Hangzhou,
China. At a news conference, he said he had told his aides to speak
with Philippine officials “to find out is this, in fact, a time
where we can have some constructive, productive conversations,”
leaving little doubt that the meeting would proceed as planned.
“I always want to
make sure that if I'm having a meeting, that it's actually productive
and we're getting something done,” Obama told reporters.
Instead, Obama now
plans to meet later on Tuesday with South Korean President Park
Geun-hye, said Ned Price, spokesman for the White House National
Security Council - a meeting where the response to North Korea's
latest missile tests is expected to be on the agenda.
Obama arrived in
Vientiane just before midnight on Monday, for the first visit by a
sitting U.S. president to Laos, where he wants to begin to address
the legacy of U.S. bombing during the Vietnam War.
He was set to give
an address on the importance he has placed on Southeast Asia in his
foreign and economic policy during his two terms in office, which
will end on Jan. 20, setting the stage for three days of meetings
with regional leaders.
The White House had
said Obama did not plan to pull any punches on his concerns about
human rights abuses in the Philippines, its treaty ally, when meeting
Duterte.
Duterte won the
presidency in May as he promised to suppress crime and wipe out drugs
and drug dealers, and a wave of extrajudicial killings has followed.
Duterte said it
would be “rude” for Obama to raise the human rights issue, and
told reporters such a conversation would prompt him to curse at
Obama, using a Filipino phrase for "son of a bitch."
"Plenty will be
killed until the last pusher is out of the streets. Until the (last)
drug manufacturer is killed we will continue," he said.
It’s not the first
time Duterte has cursed at a world leader. He called Pope Francis a
“son of a whore” in May, and called U.S. Ambassador Philip
Goldberg a “gay son of a whore.”
On Monday, Obama
said he recognized the importance of fighting the drug trade, but
insisted it must be done under the rule of law.
ASEAN SUMMIT
The unusually open
tensions threaten to overshadow the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN) and East Asia Summits in Laos from Tuesday to
Thursday.
The 10-member ASEAN
will meet leaders of other regional powers: China, Japan, South
Korea, Australia, India, Russia and the United States.
The Philippines has
been a key U.S. 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.
China rejects those
accusations, and in turn blames the United States for ratcheting up
tensions unnecessarily. China claims most of the South China Sea,
through which more than $5 trillion of trade moves annually. Brunei,
Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam have rival claims.
An arbitration court
in The Hague in July invalidated China's vast territorial claims to
the waterway after a case was brought by the Philippines, a ruling
that Beijing refuses to recognize.
Duterte said last
month he expected all ASEAN members to support the arbitration
court's ruling, but that the Philippines would not raise the issue in
Laos.
(Reporting by
Roberta Rampton, in Vientiane, Laos; Editing by Leslie Adler)
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