THE US State Department summoned Philippine Chargé d ‘Affairés to Washington Patrick Chuasoto to clarify President Rodrigo Duterte’s remarks against US Ambassador to Manila Philip Goldberg.
A spokeswoman for the State Department, Elizabeth Kennedy Trudeau, confirmed that they summoned Chuasoto to clarify the recent remarks of Duterte calling Goldberg an “annoying homosexual son of a bitch.”
Trudeau defended the US envoy to the Philippines, saying that Goldberg was one of the most senior diplomats.
“We’ve seen those inappropriate comments made about Ambassador Goldberg…We have asked the Philippines chargé to come into the State Department to clarify those remarks,” she said.
Trudeau declined to offer any details about the meeting with Chuasoto, however.
“I’m not going to read out that detailed conversation, but it was specifically on those remarks…specific remarks that were made about our ambassador to the Philippines,” she added.
Foreign Affairs Department spokesman Charles Jose also confirmed the meeting, but said it covered the “entire breadth of Philippines-US relations.”
He, too, would not discuss the specifics of the meeting.
On Monday, Duterte, in a speech during his visit to Camp Panacan in Davao City, criticized Goldberg by calling him “gay.”
Duterte told the soldiers he and Goldberg disagreed during the campaign after the President made a joke about the rape and murder of Australian missionary Jacqueline Hamill during the 1989 Davao City prison riot.
“I am okay with him,” Duterte said of US Secretary of State John Kerry, who visited the Philippines recently. But he added: “I quarreled with his gay ambassador. I am pissed with him. He meddled during the election, giving statements here and there. He was not supposed to do that.”