By ARGYLL GEDUCOS
President Duterte said that he will decline the invitation of President Donald Trump to attend the United States-Association of Southeast Asian Nations Summit in Las Vegas, Nevada in March because of how former President Barack Obama criticized him and his drug war in 2016.
In an interview with RT, a Russian international television network funded by the Russian government, Duterte shared that he recently received an invitation to go to the US for the summit.
“I just received an invitation to go to the United States together with the ASEAN leaders. I haven’t been to the States. I was invited by Obama a while back,” he said in the interview which took place in Malacañang Tuesday but uploaded in their YouTube channel yesterday afternoon.
“No. No,” the President replied when asked if he will go to the US for the summit.
The President explained that despite his intention to make friends with every country, his decision was rooted in Obama’s criticisms of his drug war in 2016.
“One time when I was being criticized by Obama in a press conference he should have realized that I was also a head of a sovereign state. He should have criticized me in a proper venue,” Duterte said.
“He should have brought the case to the United Nations rather than castigate a President of another country in a presscon. So I got mad. So I said a lot of cuss, epithets. I said he’s a son of a…,” he added, not finishing his sentence.
In a news conference in Vientiane, Laos in September 2016, Obama urged Duterte to conduct his crime war “the right way” after reports said that 3,000 people were killed in the crackdown in just over two months.
“If we’re working with a country, whether it’s about anti-terrorism, whether it’s on going after drug traffickers, and as much damage as they do, it is important from our perspective to make sure that we do it the right way because the consequences of when you do it the wrong way is innocent people get hurt, and you have a whole bunch of unintended consequences that don’t solve the problem,” the former US President said.
It was revealed over the weekend that Trump first invited the leaders of the ASEAN for a summit last November during the ASEAN summit in Bangkok, Thailand. The US President renewed the invitation early this month and said that the summit will be held in Las Vegas on March 14.
