UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said that "contacts were had to try to set up a time" for a meeting on the sidelines of the ASEAN forum meeting in Laos next week, but that "no time could be agreed upon. "A foreign affairs spokesman in Manila said that 11 heads of state had requested meetings with Duterte during the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meeting, and that he had said yes to nine of them. "Duterte has launched several tirades against the world body after a UN special rapporteur criticized his crackdown on crime, even threatening to pull out of the United Nations, a threat he later withdrew. "Maybe we’ll just have to decide to separate from the United Nations. If you are that disrespectful, son of a whore, then I will just leave you," Duterte said in a press conference last month.He later said the threat was just a "joke.

Source: The Nation Bangkok September 02, 2016 00:33 UTC