Juan Manuel Santos, President of Colombia HARDtalk

Welcome to a special edition of HARDtalk from Bogota Colombia,

with me Stephen Sackur.

Not so long ago I would have been apprehensive about walking these

streets, because Bogota was a city of car bombings and

kidnappings, fuelled by a political insurgency and drugs trafficking.

But Colombia has changed, and my guest today is the President of

this country, Juan Manuel Santos.

He is the driving force behind a peace process with the armed

revolutionary movement, the FARC.

It's difficult, it's divisive, but will it end in success?

President Juan Manuel Santos, welcome to HARDtalk.

Thank you.

You have taken an enormous personal gamble.

For three years or so, you have been committed to a peace process with

a movement which you used to call terrorists and bandits.

Do you feel the pressure that you are under?

Yes, every day.

But when you have an objective, and you think and you're convinced

it's the correct objective and it's the correct thing to do,

then the pressure is manageable.

And of course these types of processes are difficult.

It's much easier to make war.

Much easier to lead in times of war.

To make peace, you have to have a different type of leadership.

You have to be able to convince people to change their minds, their

attitudes, their way of approaching the enemy or the victimiser,

and that is much more difficult.

You say it's easier to make war than to make peace.

I just wonder when the seed was sown in your mind, this

idea that you could be the bridge, you could reach out and you could

begin a dialogue that would take you all the way to lasting peace?

Because of course you were Defence Minister at a time when

the government of President Uribe was launching a massive military

operation against the FARC.

You were responsible for some famous military victories, but even

at that time, was it in your mind that you would be a man of peace?

Even before I was accused by the government of the former President

to conspire with the guerillas and the paramilitaries against

the government to reach peace.

So I have been studying, and I have been involved in this objective,

of trying to get a negotiated settlement for many years.

Tell me about that historic handshake with

the leader of the FARC, in Havana, in September, last September.

It was a strange photograph.

You were there with him, Raul Castro,

President of Cuba overseeing it, and you didn't look very comfortable.

What were you feeling?

Well, it's a matter of timing, and I thought it would be the correct time

to start meeting face to face with the commander of the FARC, to start

to try to push negotiations at a higher level, which we are doing,

and that it was the correct moment to meet him.

Of course he has been our enemy for all my life, and I have been

his enemy all my life.

Most Colombians believe he has the blood of hundreds of Colombian

civilians on his hands.

The US Government has a bounty of $5 million on his head,

because they say he is a king pin of the FARC's cocaine trafficking,

and you shook his hand?

Yes, because you don't make peace with

your friends, you make peace with your enemies, and he is the enemy,

and if we want to end this war, we have to sit down with our enemies,

and if we have an agreement, shake their hands to seal that agreement.

And trust them?

Well, we have to trust them, but at the same time we have to put

in place the necessary guarantees for them to

comply with what they agree with.

Why would you trust people who haven't even released all

the hostages, the captives they have currently in their charge?

They have not made, according to many Colombians I have

spoken to, even the most basic concession that the people

of this country would have expected of people serious about peace.

I started this process with a very high level of scepticism,

and I started this process by not believing a word they said.

But throughout the process, they have given assurances

and they have made specific actions that have convinced me that this

time they want a settlement.

Before many, many attempts that other Governments

made with the FARC, they did not have that in mind.

They used the negotiations to get stronger militarily or

get stronger politically.

In this case, today, I am absolutely convinced that piece is possible

and they want a settlement.

Some people think you are being naive.

Not just any people, but really important people, like your former

political boss, in some ways your mentor, the former President Uribe.

He says, and I am using his words, that you have

"cosied up to terrorism".

He says "Santos, it's not peace that is near, it's surrender to the

FARC."

Well, who is giving up their arms and who is keeping the arms?

If you read what is being negotiated,

what we are simply accepting, they can leave their arms, disarm, and

continue their political struggle through legal means, and that is

what a peace process is all about.

And they are being subjected to transitional justice, so the most

responsible will go through transitional justice in order to

respect the rights of the victims, which is sort of the centre of the

solution of this conflict, that...

Well, you are right.

It's the centre of the debate right now in this country, this idea

of transitional justice, because the truth is, if you look at the

detail of the agreement, the draft that you've come up with, those who

testify, confess, to violent activity,

even extraordinarily violent activities, will avoid prison.

They will have "alternative justice".

Maybe their movements will be controlled for five years, but

they will not be put behind bars.

And what did the UK do with the IRA?

What has all the countries that have negotiated a peace process

like we are negotiating, this is the last armed conflict in the whole

of the western hemisphere.

One of the difficulties in negotiations with

the FARC was they were saying, with a good argument, "We don't want

to be the first guerilla movement to give up our arms and go to jail,

and be submitted by a court that we don't accept".

Now they are accepting the court.

They are being investigated.

They are being judged.

They are being condemned and they have to pay sanction.

But in President Uribe's words they are getting away with murder.

Well, if you analyse what President Uribe has been saying,

you will come to the conclusion that he's being a bit emotional,

and that what he's saying...

Well, the Colombian people are emotional?

Of course they are emotional.

220,000 people died in this war.

It lasted 50 years, people are emotional.

But that's exactly why we are trying to reach a peace agreement,

so we don't have to have 220,000 more victims.

War is a factory of victims and I want to stop that factory.

We have suffered too much in this country, and we are negotiating in

a position of strength, and if you analyse what we have agreed up to

today, this is a very good package.

A poll of Colombians in August, admittedly a few months ago, but not

so long ago, more than 90% of those polled wanted the FARC's key leaders

to go to jail, to be behind bars.

Of course.

I mean, this is something that I understand very well.

Not only that, they don't want the FARC to enter politics, they want

every FARC member to go to jail.

This is a very normal human reaction, but the problem here is to

get the whole package, and you tell the people, listen, there is a price

to pay, but this is the package for peace, and this is the package that

means war for 20 or 30 more years.

So...

The people of Colombia will overwhelmingly, when I submit this

to a plebiscite, which I am going to do, because I have this commitment,

I am absolutely convinced they will be overwhelmingly in favour of

peace.

So your message to the people of your country is the key leaders, and

we have talked about Timochenko, whose hand you shook, who we know

was a revered military leader of the FARC, and others like Ivan Marquez,

you are saying to me that they are more likely to end up

in the Colombian Congress as politicians, than they are to be

in a Colombian jail?

No, if we reach a final agreement, yes, of course.

Would you welcome them into Colombian politics?

Well, the whole, the whole idea of a peace process is to have the people

who are in arms, to give up their arms, and continue doing their

politics through legal means, so of course they will be welcomed, the

FARC, into Colombian politics, because the peace process is exactly

about that issue, of leaving the arms, politics with no violence.

That is the whole idea.

For the victims, and let us not forget I think the

government here recognises there are millions, up to six or seven million

victims of one sort or another.

7.5 million.

Right, 7.5 million victims.

Yes.

To them, what is your message?

Is it that you have defeated the FARC,

that the FARC have surrendered, or simply that you and the FARC have

come to a political arrangement?

It's in between.

The FARC has - is defeated in the sense that they now accept and they

realise that they will never win.

They can continue their armed struggle for many more

years because our geography, our conditions will allow that.

But at the same time, I am giving them what in the military jargon,

you call a golden bridge, OK.

You can come out of this with dignity,

and dignity is a key word, and that is the settlement we are trying to

do, to finish a war of 50 years.

If you analyse the rest of the history of the human planet,

and the peace processes that have been negotiated, you will realise

this is the key issue, and the key objective, and that is

what we are trying to achieve.

You have talked about emotion, and you have talked about dignity.

I wonder, on a personal level, how you feel about the victims, those

whose parents were perhaps murdered, those who were held in the jungle

for eight years, tied to a tree.

Those who saw their own children wiped out in massacres of villages.

How do you explain to them that you believe it is important to give

the FARC dignity?

The victims are my strongest allies.

The source, the principle source of the support I have,

are the 7.5 million victims.

I talk to them every single day, and talking to them is what gives

me more energy to continue and persevere in the peace process.

They tell me, "No, listen, I have been a victim,

I know what it feels to be a victim, and I don't want other people to

suffer as I have suffered.

Continue President Santos.

Don't give up."

And they have been a tremendous source of support

in this very difficult process.

One big question is where the Americans sit on this.

Now President Obama has hosted you at the White House, he has praised

your efforts, he thinks it is great you are trying to make peace.

But the American, they have at least 70 names of FARC

fighters, leaders, who they want extradited to the United States, to

face very serious charges of drugs trafficking, violence, whatever.

If they pursue those names, when you have made peace with

the FARC, will you extradite them to the United States?

No, they know I am not going to extradite these people

if we reach a peace agreement.

But there is a $5 million bounty on Timochenko's head.

That $5 million bounty on Timochenko will have to disappear, because I am

not going to extradite him.

You're going to protect him?

No, but...

It's extraordinary.

It's not extraordinary.

It's simply - can you imagine, a guerilla leader to negotiate

a peace process, to end up with a life prison sentence in the US?

This is absurd.

With all due respect, it's exactly what your government did do for some

of the paramilitary leaders, who you had a process of demobilisation

with, and it ended up some of them were sent to America for trial.

That was a decision of my former boss, President Uribe.

My decision here is we reach an agreement, and I stand by this

agreement, and I will respect the items in the agreement, and one of

them, of course, is to not extradite the leaders of the FARC to the

United States to end up all their lives in an American jail.

Right now, the FARC has a ceasefire, they have also said they have

stopped buying arms.

They said they have stop training their cadres,

they say they are absolutely committed to this ceasefire.

You, on the other hand, your military is not right now

in a ceasefire at all.

You're still conducting operations, but you have said that you will

consider a ceasefire very soon.

Yes.

Tell me now, when will you implement a ceasefire?

As soon as we negotiate with the FARC all

the items that will make the ceasefire an effective ceasefire.

I have told them, let's accelerate the negotiation, and we can do that,

if they want, in two or three weeks, and I am willing to declare

a ceasefire as soon as possible.

The only condition is to negotiate all the issues that surround

an effective ceasefire, and that is what I have been offering.

We have talked about trust.

If you are convinced that the FARC is absolutely serious

and committed to their ceasefire, isn't it incumbent

on you now to return the favour?

To ceasefire, otherwise, you could have a situation where

the FARC fighters aren't fighting and your military are going

into the jungle and blasting away, killing hundreds of them.

First of all, my responses to that is I will not bomb you,

bomb your camps, but I will continue to go after you, as long

as you continue to extort people.

Extortion, they live out of extortion, they have not kidnapped.

They stopped kidnapping.

They live out of illegal mining.

As long as they do anything illegal, well, my armed forces are going to

go after them.

That's why I said to them, let's negotiate the whole package

of a ceasefire, where everything should be taken into account.

I am willing to declare a ceasefire as soon as possible, as soon

as we negotiate the whole package.

The big question for Colombians is how this plays out early next year.

You have said you want a deal by the end of March 2016.

We have agreed with FARC by 23rd March we should sign

the final agreement.

That is the final permanent lasting peace for Colombia,

If we reach that agreement, yes.

But the point is you have also, you have committed to what you call

a plebiscite, or a referendum, where the final decision will be

with the people of this nation.

Yes.

So when will that happen?

That will happen after we sign the final agreement,

if we sign the final agreement around March, let's say,

then the plebiscite would be the done a couple of months afterwards.

We need to have time to explain to the people what

the agreement is about, and the people can say "No, we don't

like it", then there is no deal.

After all of this...

Yes.

The years of negotiation, are you saying this is vital

for the future of your nation, you're telling me that if the public

vote against it you will walk away?

Yes, because that's the commitment I made since the beginning.

The people...

With respect, Mr President, you will have to resign at that point.

Well, I will be in serious difficulty,

but I am absolutely convinced that the overwhelming majority

of the Colombians will support me, will support this peace process.

Seems to me your biggest problem right now isn't with the FARC, it's

with former President Uribe, who is going to mass all of his resources -

and he has a lot of resources and a lot of political friends - and he is

going to fight you tooth and nail in that referendum process,

because he says " You are surrendering to terrorism."

The people will decide, and I am again, I will repeat, absolutely

convinced that the overwhelming majority of the people will back me,

as they have been backing the peace process since the beginning.

Sometimes with a high degree of scepticism, but the last poll,

now you mentioned the polls, the last poll,

82% of the Colombians said they are interested and they would be...

Interested, sure.

And they would support the signing of a peace process, because they

think they will benefit.

A final thought.

Drugs.

It seems to me that you're sending signals as President of Columbia,

that you believe the American strategy in Latin America,

the war on drugs, needs to be completely rethought.

You made a speech not so long ago where you said

"How do I explain to a peasant in Colombia that I have to put him

in prison for growing marijuana, whereas in Colorado or Washington

State in the US it's legal to buy that very same marijuana?

The world needs an effective, fresher, more creative focus to win

this campaign against drugs."

It's not only the US, it's the world.

40 years ago, the United Nations launched the war on drugs, and

the war on drugs has not been won.

We are the country who has suffered the most of any country

in the world on this war on drugs.

We have sacrificed our best leaders, our best politicians,

our best journalists, our best judges, our best policemen,

and we are still the number one provider of cocaine to the world.

This is a tremendous problem.

The agreement with the FARC has a very important item, which is

in a way they switch sides.

They protect and they finance themselves, through

drug money, and they are now committed to helping the government

do away with the illegal crops, substituting for legal crops, and do

away with labs and the corridors.

This is a major, major breakthrough in the war on drugs, but at the same

time we need to sort of reengineer the approach on the war on drugs,

because we have not been effective.

You have, in the recent past, signalled to

the United States you want change.

You are no longer spraying the coca crops.

The United States is not happy about that, but you said, you know what?

Some people in the United States.

Others are very happy.

But the bottom line this is this.

You, over the last decades, have taken billions and billions

of US dollars to join them in fight against drugs.

Are you saying that in the future, that will no longer be

your strategy?

We're pursuing a more effective strategy.

For example the spraying.

The spraying.

We sprayed more in the last - before October when I stopped it, in the

last two years, than ever before, and the coca production went up.

What is...

So what is the solution?

To legalise drugs?

Because some Latin American leaders are talking about legalisation.

The solution is exactly what we are trying to convince the world to do,

because this is not an issue for one single country.

A single country, Colombia, cannot by itself - this is

a multinational problem, and has to be approached multi-nationally.

Is legalisation a part of the solution?

Legalisation could be part of the solution.

Decriminalisation is certainly part of the solution.

A more effective approach.

Taking away the illegal money from those mafias, those organised

crime that are so powerful in Mexico and Central America, in Europe,

in the Middle East.

This is an approach that has certainly not

been effective, and we, I am sorry to be so presumptuous, but we have,

the Colombians, more authority to talk about this issue than any

other country in the world.

President Santos, thank you very much for being on HARDtalk.

Thank you.

An