MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Boost for Colombian deal: President Santos awarded Nobel Peace Prize

“This is a great, great recognition for my country,” Juan Manuel Santos said in an audio interview posted on the Facebook account of the Nobel Prize.

The president of Colombia was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for pursuing a deal to end 52 years of conflict with a Marxist rebel group, the longest-running war in the Americas, just five days after Colombians rejected the agreement in a shocking referendum result.

 The decision to give the prize to President Juan Manuel Santos may revive hopes for the agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, with whom Colombia has been waging he last major guerrilla struggle in Latin America.

“This is a great, great recognition for my country,” Mr. Santos said in an audio interview posted on the Facebook account of the Nobel Prize.

“I receive this award in their name: the Colombian people who have suffered so much in this war,” he said. “Especially the millions of victims who have suffered in this war that we are on the verge of ending.”

Colombian voters threw out the peace deal just days after the government had invited world leaders to a celebratory signing ceremony, leaving its fate — along with Santos’s legacy — in limbo.

Despite the setback, the Norwegian Nobel Committee recognized president Santos “for his resolute efforts to bring the country’s more than 50-year-long civil war to an end.”

Announcing the award, Kaci Kullmann Five, the chairwoman of the committee, commended Juan Manuel Santos for starting the process, even as she acknowledged that the people of Colombia had rejected the outcome.

She said she hoped that awarding the prize to Mr. Santos would act as a spur for a future agreement. “The committee hopes that the peace prize will give him strength to succeed in this demanding task,” she said. “Further, it is the committee’s hope that in the years to come, the Colombian people will reap the fruits of the reconciliation process.”

It was unclear how Colombians, particularly those who voted against the deal, would react to the news. Mr. Santos has been hobbled by approval ratings that have hovered below 30% this year. And many voters were irked by how the two sides were being lauded for their peace deal by the international community before they had a chance to approve it.

A United States-trained economist from a wealthy family in Bogotá, the Colombian capital, Mr. Santos rose to power as the country’s defense minister under his predecessor as president, Álvaro Uribe. In that capacity, he organized an intense counterinsurgency campaign that diminished the FARC and wiped out many of its commanders.

As president, Santos staked his legacy on ending the war. The peace accord, announced in August, was the culmination of four years of negotiations in Havana, as the Colombian government and the rebels worked their way through a series of impasses

It outlined a timetable for the rebels to abandon their arms, and set out a pathway for former fighters to re/enter civilian life, and, in some cases, run for office. The war has claimed some 220,000 lives and displaced more than five million people.

The peace talks brought back old scars, from kidnappings, to the rape of women in rebel camps, to decades of drug trafficking as FARC muscled its way into the cocaine trade. Mr. Santos resisted calls for tough prison sentences for the FARC, saying that would push them away from the table and back to the war.

The first signs of resistance to the accord emerged this spring, when Mr. Uribe mounted rallies against it and portrayed the president as a “traitor” willing to excuse the FARC’s crimes just to get a deal. Apparently, many Colombians agreed, although they were unwilling to admit as much to pollsters, who had predicted the referendum would win by a wide margin. In the end, it failed narrowly, with 50.2 voting against it.

In an interview last month, Mr. Santos said he had struck the right balance in the agreement. “We need to achieve the maximum justice possible, but that would allow us peace,” he said. “I think we struck that equilibrium.”

But he acknowledged lingering concerns about the deal. “Making peace is much more difficult than making war because you need to change sentiments of people, people who have suffered, to try to persuade them to forgive.”

This week Mr. Santos searched for ways to save the pact, meeting with Uribe and other opponents. Experts say the two sides may either seek quick changes to the agreement — probably including jail time for some rebel leaders — or engage in a protracted renegotiation. Mr. Santos has warned that a cease-fire with the rebels will expire on October 31.