Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has urged the White House to be “prudent and patient” in dealing with North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, warning that “the guy simply wants to end the world.”
“There seems to be two countries playing with their toys and those toys are not really to entertain, ” Duterte said during a media briefing in Manila on Saturday.
“You know that they are playing with somebody who relishes letting go of missiles and everything. I would not want to go into his (Kim’s) mind because I really do not know what’s inside but he’s putting mother earth, the planet to an edge, ” he added.
Duterte was speaking in his role as chairman of ASEAN, a group of ten South-East Asian countries that is meeting in the Philippines’ capital over the weekend against a backdrop of yet another failed ballistic test that Pyongyang launched on Saturday morning. It is thought to be the country’s sixth missile test this year.
“The guy (Kim) simply wants to end the world, that is why he is very happy. He is always smiling. But he really wants to finish everything and he wants to drag us all down, ” Duterte said.
Philippines president, famous for his rhetoric and controversial anti-drugs campaign, said that he would try to persuade his US counterpart, Donald Trump, to back down from the conflict.
