Duterte declines US invitation to attend summit

President Rodrigo Duterte will not be attending the US summit with Southeast Asian leaders in Las Vegas this March, he announced in an exclusive interview with Russia Today on Jan. 21 (Jan. 22 in Manila).

“No, no,” Mr. Duterte replied when asked if he would accept US President Donald Trump’s invitation to the summit with member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations on March 14.

Mr. Duterte, who cited a previous invitation to visit the United States from former US President Barack Obama, was apparently still “mad” because of Obama’s criticism of the Philippine government’s war on drugs.

“I haven’t been to the States. I was invited by Obama a while back,” the President said.

He continued: “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.”

Obama, Mr. Duterte said, “should have brought the case to the United Nations rather than castigate a President of another country in a press con. So I got mad. So I said a lot of cuss and epithets.”

Mr. Duterte made the remarks a few days after Malacañang announced Trump’s invitation originally made in November and reiterated in a letter sent on Jan. 9.

This was the second time that Trump had invited Mr. Duterte to visit the United States. The first invitation was extended in April 2017.

Earlier on Thursday, presidential spokesperson Salvador Panelo said the Chief Executive appeared to have some reservations about the invitation mainly because of a rider introduced by three US senators in the United States’ 2020 national budget, which sought to ban US entry to Philippine officials involved in Sen. Leila de Lima’s arrest and detention, ostensibly on drug charges.

Panelo quoted the President as saying that he does not want to go to the United States “because he is supposed to be number one on the list” of officials to be denied US entry.

“I do not even know if the US will even issue me a visa. And if I’m issued a visa, I do not know if when I arrived in the States, I will be allowed entry,” the Palace official quoted Mr. Duterte as saying.