President to discuss drug war with Obama

PRESIDENT Duterte will meet today with US President Barack Obama after the opening of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) summit in the Laotian capital of Vientiane, where he was scheduled to arrive late last night on a chartered Philippine Airlines flight from Davao City.

The President’s bilateral talks with Obama will be the first in his series of meetings with nine heads of state on the sidelines of the three-day Asean conference. The 40-minute meeting is scheduled at Landmark Hotel at 4:10 p.m. on Tuesday.

The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) earlier said Mr. Duterte would discuss with Obama his administration’s take-no-prisoner strategy in combating illegal drugs, which has led to the deaths of some 2,000 drug suspects and triggered international condemnation.

The United States has expressed concern at the rising number of summary executions in the antinarcotics drive in the Philippines.

In a predeparture news conference in Davao City on Monday afternoon, Mr. Duterte railed against critics of his hardline approach to stamp out what he called a “pandemic” that had turned 3 million Filipinos into “shabu,” or crystal meth, users.

Answering a reporter’s question about how he intends to explain the extrajudicial killings to Obama, Mr. Duterte replied: “I am a President of a sovereign state and we have long ceased to be a colony. I do not have any master except the Filipino people, nobody but nobody. You must be respectful. Do not just throw questions. Putang ina, I will swear at you in that forum,” he said, using the Filipino phrase for son of a bitch.

“This is an independent country. Nobody has the right to lecture on me. God. Do not do it. There will be trouble between us if you do it to me,” said Mr. Duterte, who has earlier cursed the Pope and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

“I do not want to pick a quarrel with Obama, but certainly I would not appear to be beholden to anybody,” he said.

Mr. Duterte and his 30-member delegation arrived in Vientiane at 7:20 p.m. (8:20 p.m. in Manila).

Obama response

During a stop in Hangzhou en route to Vientiane, Obama told a news conference in response to a question that he had heard about Mr. Duterte’s expletive-laden remarks and had asked his staff to assess whether it would be productive for him to meet with the Philippine leader.

“He’s a colorful guy,” Obama joked on the eve of the scheduled face-to-face, before pointedly noting: “I always want to make sure if I’m having a meeting that would be actually productive.”

In his maiden appearance on the world stage as President of the Philippines, Mr. Duterte will also rally his counterparts in Asean to make the region free from the narcotics trade.

PREDEPARTURE TALK President Duterte says he will not be lectured on human rights by US President Barack Obama when they meet in Vientiane during a press conference before he left for the Asean summit in Laos. AFP

He will discuss issues regarding cross-border crimes such terrorism, human trafficking and drug smuggling, and urge regional leaders to support efforts promoting closer economic cooperation.

Mr. Duterte departed three days after a bomb tore through a night market in his Davao hometown that left 14 people dead and scores wounded.

The UN secretary general had asked for a meeting with Mr. Duterte in Vientiane, but the DFA said the President could not accommodate the request because of his tight schedule.

The President would attend the opening ceremony of the Asean summit at 1 p.m. before proceeding to his meeting with Obama.

He was also set to attend eight other events on his first day, including a courtesy call with Lao Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith and a welcome dinner hosted by the Lao government for the visiting Asean heads of state.

Mr. Duterte will also officially receive from Sisoulith the chairmanship of the Asean meeting which will be held in the Philippines next year.

Veloso case

The President is scheduled to proceed to Indonesia on Thursday for a 24-hour visit.

He said he would ask Indonesian President Joko Widodo for mercy for Mary Jane Veloso, who is in Indonesia’s death row after being convicted of being a drug courier.

“If my pleadings will fall on deaf ears, I am ready to accept it—for the simple reason I do not doubt the judicial system of Indonesia,” he said.

If Widodo denied his plea, Mr. Duterte said he would be still be grateful that Veloso had been treated well.

“For after all, we have our laws to follow and had it been any other … or the other way around, I might also be at the receiving end of so many pleas for mercy—and I would never know what or how to react,” he said.

Veloso was granted a last-minute reprieve from execution in April last year. This came after the surrender of her recruiter in the Philippines. She is expected to testify at the human trafficking case of her recruiter, Indonesian authorities said earlier. With reports from AP, AFP and Germelina Lacorte, Inquirer Mindanao, in Davao City