http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/09/world/asia/obama-laos-asia-asean-tour.html 2016-09-08 13:57:02 Leaving Asia, Obama Predicts U.S. Tilt Toward Region Will Be Lasting The president defended the success of the meetings on his tour and dismissed the distractions that caught the news media’s attention as overblown. === VIENTIANE, Laos — “The concern that I’ve heard is not that what we’ve done hasn’t been important and successful,” Mr. Obama said at a news conference in Vientiane, the capital of “My hope and expectation is that my successor will in fact will sustain this kind of engagement,” he said. Disagreements Mr. Obama, however, said that was primarily a fixation by the news media that did not reflect his conversations with Asian leaders or the enthusiastic welcome he received from ordinary people in Laos. “If this theory about my reception and my rebalance policy is based on me going down the short stairs in China, yes, I think that is overblown,” he said. “Any reasonable person, certainly any person in the region, would be puzzled as to how this became somehow indicative of the work that we’ve done here.” For Mr. Obama, the challenges entailed in asserting the United States’ role in the region against a rising China became clear in the diplomatic maneuvering at a two-day meeting in Laos of the Beijing lobbied successfully at the meeting to temper references to China’s territorial clashes in “Several leaders remained seriously concerned over recent developments in the South China Sea,” it said, calling for “the parties concerned to resolve their disputes by peaceful means, in accordance with universally recognized principles of international laws.” The Obama administration had hoped to use For some of China’s neighbors, including Laos, the host of the meeting, increasing tensions is the last thing they want to do. Even the Philippines, which “China has won in the last round of competition over the South China Sea,” said Mr. Obama has also struggled because another pillar of his Asia strategy, But if Mr. Obama was a visible presence in his last appearance at an Asian summit meeting, Mr. Duterte’s erratic performance ended up seizing much of the attention. He missed a photograph with other leaders; his spokesman later said he had a migraine. At a closed session later, according to officials, Mr. Duterte threw out his prepared remarks and delivered an emotional speech on human rights, in which he accused industrialized countries of putting less-developed countries “under the yoke of imperialism.”