Manila, February 24 -- The Philippines's top diplomat has defended his comments on Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler's massacre of Jews as "historical fact", amid brewing diplomatic tension between Manila and Berlin. Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr wrote on social media on Saturday that President Rodrigo Duterte's previous comparison of his deadly war on drugs to the Nazi leader's killing of millions of Jews during the Holocaust "is a metaphor". "The killing of 6M Jews, 20M Russians & innocents like Anne Frank in WW2 is historical fact," Locsin added in the Twitter post. Locsin's comment followed reports on Friday that Germany's foreign ministry had summoned the Philippines's acting ambassador to Berlin, to protest earlier remarks he had made about Duterte's controversial Holocaust statement to a journalist during a visit to the German capital on Monday. In the interview with ARD journalist Arnd Henze, Locsin responded to a question about Duterte's 2016 remarks, in which the head of state appeared to compare himself to Hitler, and said he would be "happy to slaughter" millions of drug addicts in the Philippines, like the Nazis did to millions of Jews. "I said the same thing," Locsin told Henze. "I myself said the same thing before he even said it." In a statement on Friday, the Department of Foreign Affairs in the Philippines described a clip of an interview as "unfortunate" and "biased". "The video posted by Mr Henze on his blog is incomplete and misleading. It failed to show Mr Henze's deliberate attempts to provoke Secretary Locsin into giving controversial remarks," it said. In response to Germany's diplomatic protest, Locsin said on Friday: "Rich, coming from one of those who did not just comment on it but perpetrated it." In a separate post, Locsin confirmed the summons writing on Twitter, "Yes, what now? Berlin embassy is handling it; I already told them to tell the German Foreign Ministry to send the German ambassador to me because I'd rather finish my own fights than have others do it." Writing in the Filipino language, Locsin ended his post with a quip seen by critics as homophobic.
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