Juan Manuel Santos - President of Colombia HARDtalk

Now on BBC News, it is time for HARDtalk.

Welcome to a special edition of HARDtalk, from Oslo. I am Stephen

Sackur. Today I have an exclusive interview with the winner of this

year's Nobel peace prize, President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia is

being honoured for his efforts to bring an end to the long war between

the Colombian government and the leftist Farc rebels. It has been a

difficult, complex, a controversial process, at a peace deal is now in

place. But for all of the accolades, here in Oslo, will it work?

President Juan Manuel Santos, welcome to HARDtalk.

And many congratulations on winning the Nobel Peace Prize. How are you

feeling right now? Thank you very much. I'm feeling very happy, very

excited, very honoured, and very motivated to continue working for

peace in my country. Over the course of the last five, six years, that

you have been working on this deal, we have spoken several times. And it

strikes me that it is in some ways almost a miracle that you have got

to this point, not least because, just a few months ago, the people of

your country voters on the peace deal you had done, and they rejected

it. How big a blow was that? It was a big load. I must confess that I

didn't expect it. Nobody expected it, not even the people who won. But

I am accustomed to following the Chinese proverb, try to find the

opportunity from every crisis. And I found that opportunity, no one from

a very small margin, and I said they all want peace, why don't we get

together, talk about it, see what you don't like about this agreement,

can we change it? We did that for 45 days. We ended up with a new

agreement, which is a better agreement, a stronger agreement, and

so it was, in a way, a blessing in disguise. Well, you can say that

with a smile on your face here in Oslo as you're about to receive the

Nobel Peace Prize, but the fact is, it did undermine your credibility.

Let me just quote to you something that you said to me last time we

spoke, a year ago, in the presidential palace in Bogota. You

said to me, but people can say no, we don't like it, in the referendum,

and then there will be no deal. So I said, with respect, Mr President,

you will have to resign in that point. And you said, I will be in

serious difficulty. But I'm quite convinced the overwhelming majority

will support me. You were plain wrong. Yes, I was wrong. And many

people these days are wrong about plebiscites, about referendums. It

was a terrible mistake, wasn't it? I am not sorry about that, because I

think I did the correct thing. I was not obliged to put the agreement to

a referendum. It was on my own initiative, many people advised me

against it, what I did it anyway. I learned my lesson. But the point is,

you could talk about David Cameron after Brexit, you could talk about

Renzi after the recent Italian referendum. They put their

credibility on the line, they lost, and they resigned. How close did you

come to resigning? We are in a Parliamentary system, we have a

presidential system. We have a mandate, I have a mandate, from the

people of Colombia until August 20 18. And the mandate is, you must

achieve peace in Colombia, and that is what I am doing. Did you come

close to resigning? In those dark hours, when you realise that just by

a slim majority you have lost a referendum on the deal, did you

consider resigning? No, I considered that it was my obligation to

persevere, to take advantage of the situation, and that is what I did. I

persevered, I took advantage of the situation, and now we're a better

position than we were before the plebiscite. The 77% of our Congress

voted, endorsed this agreement, and the people in the streets went out

to support a new agreement, and that is what I am giving the people. We

will talk about the detail of the revised agreement in just a minute,

but before we get there, just a second. Consider for me the impact

of the announcement that you had won the Nobel Peace Prize. It is a came

literally I think three days after the reversal that use of the

referendum. Would it fair to say that without that international

accolade, and the momentum it gave you, you might not have gotten to

this point today, with a new deal? It is fair to say... It was four

days after the plebiscite, it is fair to say that it was a gift from

heaven, and it gave me a great push. And I was in the navy, and I learnt

to sail, and when there is no wind, the ship starts to drift. And this

came like a big wind, that pushed the whole country, and me, and the

whole process, to the port of destiny, which was a peace

agreement. Isn't it worrying, though, for the long-term stability

of this deal, that you are telling me you probably wouldn't have

reached the destination without international support? In the end it

is going to live or failed by the strength of the support it has

inside the country, and if it requires the committee of Nobel to

give you the prop that you needed to keep this deal alive, that

ultimately is quite worrying. I have never said that, without the Nobel,

I could not have achieved a new agreement. I have not said that.

What I have said is that this of course encouraged me and the whole

of the Colombian people, because it was interpreted as a mandate from

the international community to continue and to persevere. And that

helped. To what extent do you think the Norwegians ultimately, in a

sense, were giving themselves a pat on the back? They have been

important guarantors of the peace negotiation for years. They are one

of the key players supporting the whole process. And now they give you

the Nobel Peace Prize at a moment when you needed support more than

ever before. Do you think it was somewhat self-serving, from their

point of view? Well, you will have to ask them. But what I do say is

that the Norwegians have been very helpful, since the very beginning,

when we started secret talks. They were there, present, helping,

supporting, pushing. And they have been following this agreement for

six years, and I owe a big debt of gratitude to the Norwegians.

Wouldn't this be more convincing as a display of Lumby's commitment to

peace if sitting alongside you today, talking to me, about to

receive a Nobel Peace Prize, were the leader of Farc, known as

Timochenko? Why is he not yet, why is he not receiving the prize,

because it takes two to achieve peace, as it does to tango. That is

a question for the committee. Would you like to see him next to you,

receiving this prize? Well, we had some difficulties bringing him here

if he would have been invited, because legally there are problems

with the travel and the arrangements. But the fact is that

when I say they are here in heart or spirit. What is your personal

relationship like with Timochenko, who is that a factor of leader of

Farc? It is distant. We have developed a degree of trust that

allowed us to talk quite openly about certain problems. Today you

can say, hand on heart, I trust him, and I believe in his commitments?

Well, I can say today that he has been committed to reaching an

agreement, because otherwise this would not have been possible. But of

course, we are putting in the agreement all type of guarantees for

both sides to comply with what was agreed. And we have to stick to

those guarantees. Let's talk a little bit about the detail of the

deal, and it is highly complex, so we will try to keep it simple. Your

opponents, led by the former president, your leader and mental,

say that there are two fundamental problems you have not removed from

the agreement, despite the modifications you have made.

Number one, the Farc are not going to be published the terrible

they committed, crimes of war, crimes against humanity.

They are going to go unpunished, they will not be put into jail.

And number two, the leaders of the Farc, even those who,

during the process of truth telling, are found to have committed war

crimes, they will be allowed to take public office.

Some of them will sit in your parliament, and that,

to your critics, is an insult to the Colombian people.

Well, former president Uribe himself was the one who presented

to the Columbian Congress full amnesty for the M-19 guerrillas,

Second, it is not true that there is impunity.

For the first time, for the first time in the history of conflict

resolutions, armed conflict resolutions,

the two parties got together and agreed on a transitional

justice, whereby the most responsible will be investigated,

judged and sanctioned by special tribunal.

They will not be put in prison, where many Colombians believe

they belong, for all of the atrocities they committed

They will have to repair and restore.

This is a new approach to justice, not only in Colombia,

And tell me one example where the guerrillas have agreed

to lay down their arms and go to jail.

The whole purpose of a peace process is for the armed insurgents

It is the whole purpose of the process.

So if you don't allow them to get elected into public office,

to continue fighting for their ideas, but in the legal

framework, in the democracy, then what's the purpose

But Mr President, how do you tell the families of those

who were assassinated, those who were kidnapped and held

for years in the jungle, those whose families were bombed

How do you persuade all of those people that it is right and proper

and just that the men who ordered those actions can,

in the future, sit in your congres, your lower house

and your senate, and could, in theory, even run for president?

Well, let me tell you, one of the things I've learned

in this process, a process that has very

because this is the first process where the victims,

the victims, are put in the centre of the solution

And they, the victims, have been my

And they are the ones who are telling me, go ahead,

It's the people who have not suffered the conflict directly,

the ones that are apprehensive about this particular issue.

And the problem is now, because of what happened

with the first referendum, and the fact you now have got

the deal approved through the Colombian legislature,

but not through another referendum, you don't have a popular mandate

Well, in the UK, you are discussing at this very moment

what is the role of Parliament in treaties like Brexit?

Is parliament going to intervene or not?

In our constitution there are two specific articles that say Congress

is the representative of the people and they have the power.

We have negotiated nine peace agreements.

And where have these peace agreements gone to?

I told you, I was not obligated to put this to a referendum.

Even the opposition did not want the referendum.

And I think it is my duty, my obligation,

We have many people who voted no, now supporting the agreement.

It seems to me there is still a lot of scope for things to go wrong.

Right now the Constitutional Court in your country is considering

whether to give you the sort of fast track authority to carry

through some of the measures that are vital to making this process

work, including the amnesty law and a whole raft of other things

that the Farc say must happen if they are to disarm.

How worried are you that this process could yet

While this has been a difficult process.

A war of 52 years, to end it, of course,

We have encountered many obstacles, many challenges.

We have been fixing and eliminating through perseverance.

This case with the Constitutional Court, what is the issue is the fast

track to shorten the time between the signature of the

The bottom line is, if you don't get that authority and you cannot

deliver these changes quickly, including the amnesty law,

the Farc say, you can forget about us disarming

and going to these special safe areas.

They are now moving towards those safe areas.

We still have a shorter procedure in the Congress

through regular means to, for example, to approve

But I am very confident and I hope that the Constitutional Court

will give its blessing to the fast track.

Here is perhaps as a bigger, more unpredictable problem.

In an ironic way, you now depend on the safety and the protection

of the Farc leaders, and indeed the Farc

militants generally, because if other elements...

I am thinking of paramilitary remnants, criminal gangs.

If they start to target the Farc leadership,

to assassinate them, the long-term effect will be

that the Farc may well go back to the battlefield.

So you now need to supervise and guarantee the safety

Yes, and we have set a special commission

presided by me as president, with the Armed Forces,

with the Attorney General, with NGOs that defend human rights,

and representatives of the Farc, to follow very closely the process

This is something quite unique- our soldiers, our policeman,

which were the ones who fought the Farc, are now protecting them.

Yes, but Mr President, there are worrying signs.

You know better than either in the last two months or so,

there have been a series of targeted killings of social activists,

They are not Farc people, they are people associated

with leftist politics and the Farc said this, the surgeon paramilitary

actions, the killings, against our civilian population

and political and social leaders is casting a long shadow.

We have had meetings with the representatives

Who is behind these killings, do you believe?

The Attorney General had made a thorough investigation.

What he has said so far is that there is no

These are killings that have happened in the areas

where the Farc has left, they are areas where is illegal

It is more related with the dispute of what is going to happen with that

business, more than a systematic intention to repeat

what the Farc and the country lived 20, 30 years ago.

But this is a different country with a state that is more in control

and some Armed Forces that are very much more effective

and so we are on top of that and let me assure you that

what happened 25, 30 years ago will not happen this time.

It is very interesting to me, Mr President, that you say it is now

a different country, we have moved on.

In some ways the profound problems that lay at the heart

of the insurgency for so long have not been eradicated in Colombia.

I am thinking of one example, the gross economic

The fact that 50% of all Colombia's land is in the hands of less

You are still a profoundly unequal society.

Let me tell you that in the last five, six

years, we have decreased poverty by 12%.

4,600,000 Colombians have been brought out of poverty.

I have been able to reduce extreme poverty in half, 50%.

We have created more than 4.3 million formal employments.

For the first time, the difference between rich regions and poor

So has the difference between rich people and poor people.

We have a long way to go still, but we are going

We now have, for the first time, universal coverage

Everybody has the right to be treated by the health system.

And we have free education for every single Colombian.

And one other area where you still have a huge amount of work to do

is on eradicating the drugs trade, and that is another way

which for so long the Farc and other militant groups have

funded their activities and, frankly, criminalised your society.

Colombia remains, today, according to the US,

the single largest source of cocaine coming into America.

Double the supplies coming from Peru and Bolivia combined.

You have failed to eradicate the drugs trade.

The world has failed in the war on drugs.

And I have been saying this for the last five years.

The war on drugs declared by the world, the UK, the US,

Europe, the whole world, the United Nations, 40 years

So with the authority of the Nobel Peace Prize on your shoulders,

what is your message to the world today?

That we have to address the war on drugs, which is creating more

damage than all the wars that have been fought together combined.

And Colombia has been the country that has put the highest cost,

Now, this particular peace agreement will give us, for the first time,

the opportunity to find a structural solution to the illegal crops.

Because before, we went with our soldiers, our policemen,

our civilian eradicators, to these very revoked regions.

We were met by the Farc, among others, snipers, or landmines.

We of the second most mined country in the whole

We went there at a very high cost, eradicated 1000 hectares,

2000 hectares, went back and the day after they just planted more.

Now we will have the opportunity to go with the state and give

an alternative for the first time to the peasants.

Just a quick thought before we end on one unknowable for the future.

You have had strong support from Barack Obama in pursuing this

peace agreement and in the quote, unquote, war on drugs, which you

Donald Trump is about to enter the White House.

You have expressed, you did during the campaign in September,

you said Trump's policies are not in sync with what Colombia wants

So how concerned are you that a Trump Presidency will not offer

Colombia the support it needs as it tries to make this

Well, fortunately, we have had a bipartisan foreign policy

Both Republicans and Democrats have supported the deal

It was a bipartisan foreign policy which has been

We are almost out of time, but your thoughts on Trump.

How concerned are you that he won't support

We hope that the Republicans will continue to support,

as they have supported us, in the last 15-20 years.

So I hope that he will support us, but we don't know, as of today,

I hope he looks at the regions south of the Rio Grande and he sees

that there is a strategic interest for the United States there.

In a word, you really believe this peace deal is going to work?

We have to end there, but President Juan Manuel Santos,

congratulations again and thank you for being with me on HARDtalk.