Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte told Barack Obama he never called him a “son of a bitch”, he said , but maintained a defiant stance on his war on drugs, saying UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was a fool for bringing up human rights.
U.S. President Obama cancelled a planned meeting with Mr. Duterte at this week’s ASEAN summit in Laos after the Philippine leader’s alleged insult in his native Tagalog, but the two met briefly later as they waited to take their seats at a banquet.
On a visit to the Indonesian capital on Friday, Mr. Duterte told a group of Filipinos that the slur was not directed at the U.S. President and that he had told him so. “I was ready [for Obama]. I was waiting for Obama to respond. Lawyer to lawyer, we are both lawyers anyway… I said I never made the statement. Check it out… I said that, but not in relation to Obama,” he said. “I’m not fighting with America.”
Duterte said he thought UN Secretary-General Ban a fool for bringing up the issue of human rights violations weeks before the summit in Laos. “Even Ban Ki-moon weighed in,” Mr. Duterte said.
