Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has insisted  that he snubbed US leader Barack Obama after Washington cancelled their scheduled bilateral meeting in Laos last week.
Duterte sparked a storm ahead of an Asian gathering by insulting Obama and prompting the US leader to cancel planned talks between the two allies on September 6.
The pair met briefly later after Duterte expressed regret.
But the fiery Filipino leader said on Monday he skipped another meeting there two days later between Obama and Southeast Asian leaders, following US criticism of Manila’s anti-crime campaign which has claimed almost 3,000 lives.
“I purposely did not attend the bilateral talks between Asean countries and the president of the United States,” Duterte said in a speech to police and military personnel.
“I really skipped that one.”
“You just cannot (lecture) a president of a sovereign state. Even Obama. It would have been wrong for him to do that. That is why I disrespected them.”
The former prosecutor mocked the “bleeding hearts” who criticised him for his human rights abuses, and reiterated his call for security forces to kill drug suspects and other criminals.
Duterte won presidential elections by a landslide in May after promising that tens of thousands of people would be killed in an unprecedented law-and-order crackdown.
Security forces have relentlessly followed his orders since he took office on June 30.
But his actions have sparked a wave of international condemnation, including from the UN chief Ban Ki-moon and the US State Department.
In a brief encounter in Laos, Obama urged the Filipino leader to conduct his crime war “the right way” and protect human rights, but Duterte dismissed it as being none of America’s business.
Earlier Monday, Duterte said he was ordering all US special forces to leave the troubled southern Philippines where they have been advising local troops in battling Muslim extremists, saying the West was at the root of the persistent Muslim insurgency.
The US is the country’s main defence ally and former colonial ruler.
The Philippines will not participate in joint patrols in the disputed South China Sea, president Rodrigo Duterte said yesterday, describing such patrols as “a hostile act”.Duterte said the Philippine navy and coastguard would only patrol seas within the 12-nautical mile limit of the country’s territorial waters and not its exclusive economic zone.
“We will not join any expedition of patrolling the sea,” he said in a speech at the air force.”I will not allow it because I do not want my country to be involved in a hostile act.”
“I just want to patrol our territorial waters,” he added.
The United States and the Philippines have been holding joint maritime patrols in the contested South China Sea in March to help build interoperability and improve the Philippine Navy’s capability.
Duterte also directed defence secretary Delfin Lorenzana and the military to check into purchasing arms in either Russia or China.
“We can buy the arms where they are cheap and where there are no strings attached and it is transparent,” he said.
The US is one of the closest allies of the Philippines and has been the main source of Manila’s defence equipment and material.
But Duterte has been very vocal about his displeasure with the US, blaming Washington for the problems in his country’s strife-torn south.


President Duterte said yesterday his country was not cutting ties with its allies, a day after he called for the withdrawal of US special forces.
“We are not going to cut our umbilical cord to countries we are allied with,” Duterte said in a speech at a Philippine air force event.
Duterte also said the Philippines does not intend to fight any other country.
The Philippines assured the United States yesterday it will honour its obligations as a military ally following volleys of profane tirades by unpredictable President Rodrigo Duterte.
Top officials moved to stem the damage, saying that it was business as usual between the Philippines and its powerful ally, whose backing is essential as it jousts with China over the maritime dispute.
“There is no shift in so far as our policy is concerned with respect to our close friendship with the Americans,” foreign secretary Perfecto Yasay said yesterday.
The president’s spokesman also insisted that Duterte’s comments were providing context to the conflict in the south, not a reversal of policy.
“These were not directives to leave, OK? But this was a context on why we have a conflict (in Mindanao).In other words, he’s giving a broad historical, cultural landscape,” Duterte’s spokesman Ernesto Abella said.
Yasay, who was flying to Washington later in the day for talks, added the Duterte administration would honour existing defence agreements including a 2014 accord giving the US military access to at least five Philippine bases.
One of the bases is located in the southern region of Mindanao, where the government is battling Islamic militants who have offered allegiance to Islamic State gunmen in the Middle East.
The Pentagon in June also deployed warplanes and about 120 personnel in the northern Philippines for short-term training missions aimed at ensuring the allies’ access to the South China Sea.
Duterte’s predecessor Benigno Aquino had pursued closer military ties with the United States as part of plans to improve the deterrence capability of his militarily weak nation.
In April, the Philippine Navy began joint South China Sea naval patrols with the US as the Pentagon responded to muscular Chinese actions in the sea, including building artificial islands over disputed reefs.
Yasay attempted to downplay Duterte’s comments, saying yesterday they were “in the context of wanting to save the lives of these Americans who might be exposing themselves to unnecessary risk” from militant attacks.
Duterte, 71, has said the row was triggered by State Department criticism of his controversial war on drug crime, which has left about 3,000 people dead since he began his six-year term on June 30.
Obama has said Duterte must conduct his crime war “the right way”, protecting human rights.
Zachary Abuza, a Southeast Asian security expert at the National War College in the United States, said Duterte’s actions towards the US were worrying in light of militant activity in Mindanao.
“It is going to take a lot of work to get this relationship back on track,” Abuza told AFP.
The United States said the Philippine government had not officially communicated president Rodrigo Duterte’s demand to pull US military advisers out of the rebellion-torn southern Philippines.
Since 2002, up to 600 US advisers have been deployed in the Mindanao region to train troops battling Muslim extremists but their numbers have been scaled down in recent years.
In Washington, the Pentagon and State Department said they had not been officially contacted by Manila about pulling out the remaining advisers.
Yasay, interviewed by Manila’s ABS-CBN network, also confirmed the allies had not discussed Duterte’s demand.
He said only around 100 US advisers were left in the south of the country.
Yasay, who was heading to Washington for talks, added the Duterte administration would honour existing defence agreements including a 2014 accord giving the US military access to at least five Philippine bases, one of them in Mindanao.
Duterte’s spokesman Ernesto Abella also said the president’s pronouncements were not to be taken as policy.
“These were not directives to leave, OK? But this was a context on why we have a conflict (in Mindanao).In other words, he’s giving a broad historical, cultural landscape.”