Barack Obama on Monday cancelled a meeting with Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte after the Filipino leader threatened to swear at the US president as he asserted that he was “no American puppet”.

Mr Obama was expected to confront Mr Duterte about the use of extrajudicial killings in the country’s war on drugs. More than 2,000 people who have been suspected of being drug dealers or users have been killed since Mr Duterte took office at the end of June, according to the Associated Press, writes Adam Samson in New York and Bangkok regional correspondent Michael Peel.

“I am a president of a sovereign state and we have long ceased to be a colony. I do not have any master except the Filipino people, nobody but nobody”, Mr Duterte was reported to have said when asked about how he would react if Mr Obama pressed him on the subject. “Son of a bitch I will swear at you”.