http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/06/world/asia/philippines-president-rodrigo-duterte-warns-obama-not-to-ask-about-killings.html 2016-09-05 22:59:42 Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte Warns Obama Not to Ask About Killings Mr. Duterte also used coarse language when referring to President Obama, leading to questions about whether the leaders would meet in Laos this week. === President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines used an expletive to warn President Obama on Monday not to ask him about extrajudicial killings, raising questions about whether the two leaders would meet at an Asian summit meeting this week as planned. “I am a president of a sovereign state, and we have long ceased to be a colony,” Mr. Duterte told reporters before he left his country for Laos, where he and Mr. Obama will attend the meeting of the “I do not have any master except the Filipino people, nobody but nobody,” he said in remarks Mr. Obama, who was Mr. Obama had planned to meet Mr. Duterte in Laos on Tuesday. But after the Filipino leader’s remarks, Obama administration officials said the meeting was unlikely. “Clearly, he’s a colorful guy,” Mr. Obama said Monday. “I always want to make sure if I’m having a meeting that it’s productive.” Mr. Duterte, a former mayor of Davao, was apparently referring to the numbers highlighting his crackdown on drug dealers, a part of the campaign pledge that swept him to victory in the country’s presidential election in May. Last month, the Philippines’s top police official, Chief Ronald dela Rosa, told a Senate hearing that killings by the police and vigilantes in the country’s war on drugs had soared to nearly 1,800 in the seven weeks since Mr. Duterte was Mr. Duterte’s public image has been characterized by He