Colombia wants to strengthen its trade and investment ties with Britain after the country leaves the European Union, President Juan Manuel Santos said yesterday.
Speaking to British lawmakers, Santos said the British investment into Colombia would be able to grow when peace is achieved with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or Farc.
Santos has promised to revive a peace plan even though Colombians narrowly rejected it in a referendum earlier this month and he said he hoped for a better and more legitimate deal after a national dialogue.
Many voters believed the plan was too lenient on the Farc guerrillas.
Santos has since been in talks with the Marxist rebels and those who opposed the deal, notably former president Alvaro Uribe, and said he wants a new agreement to be secured by Christmas.
But Angelika Rettberg, expert in peace processes at the Colombian university of Los Andes, warned that while his trip to Britain may boost his international profile, it “doesn’t help him fix the crisis at home”. If anything, it “aggravates the perception that he’s interested in make a good impression abroad” while he should be working on the peace process, she said.
The first day of Santos’ visit was dominated by ceremonial events, including tea with heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles and a meeting with members of parliament.
Santos will today hold talks with Prime Minister Theresa May at Downing Street, before heading to Belfast tomorrow to meet key figures from the Northern Ireland peace process.
“Its success is a constant reminder of what is possible,” Santos wrote in The Times on Monday.
Santos was briefly caught up in the Irish conflict when, as a young man working in London, he was thrown to the ground by a bomb left in a bin by the IRA paramilitary group.
“The experiences of Northern Ireland continue to inspire my vision of Colombia as a country at peace with itself,” Santos wrote.
“I know that differences and grievances persist in Northern Ireland but its people have learnt to express them through democratic means.”
Northern Ireland was plagued by three decades of violence over British control of the province, in which 3,500 people died, until the 1998 Good Friday accords largely brought an end to the fighting.
Two architects of the peace process — David Trimble and John Hume — won the Nobel Peace Prize that year.
The Colombian government’s 52-year-long war is of a different magnitude, however.
Although a ceasefire with Farc has been extended until December 31, Santos warned in the Times that “time has become the biggest threat” to peace.