SOURCE:
CACHE VALLEY DAILY via Associated Press
URL:
http://www.cachevalleydaily.com/news/world/article_c4f2aace-104b-5f7f-9e40-c8d218b4cf14.html
MANILA, Philippines (AP) — The new Philippine president on Friday blamed U.S. intervention for the bloody conflicts in Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries in his latest criticism of Manila's closest security ally.
President Rodrigo Duterte suggested in a speech that intrusive policy was to blame for terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, saying, "It is not that the Middle East is exporting terrorism to America, America imported terrorism."
The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, which was backed by Britain, led to Saddam Hussein's downfall but caused the oil-rich nation to descend into bloody factional strife, Duterte said, adding that America's action had no legal basis.
"They forced their way to Iraq ... look at Iraq now, look what happened to Libya, look what happened to Syria," he said. "People are being annihilated there including children."
"They destroyed the Middle East," Duterte told the Muslim community in southern Davao city in a ceremony marking the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.
The former Davao mayor has said he would be a leftist president who would chart a foreign policy not dependent on the United States.
He has pointed out the benefits of nurturing friendly relations with Beijing, including a Chinese offer of financing railway projects in the Philippines. The country has had frosty ties with China under Duterte's predecessor, Benigno Aquino III, who bolstered security ties with the U.S. to deter China's aggressive actions in disputed South China Sea territories.
Duterte has given allies of communist rebels at least two key posts in his Cabinet as part of an effort to forge a peace deal with the Maoist insurgents, who have waged a Marxist insurgency for decades and are labeled terrorists by Washington.
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