Colombian leader says peace with FARC "best tribute" to Chávez

Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos said on 5 March that he "profoundly" regretted the death of Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez and described peace with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) as "the best tribute we can make to the memory" of a president who became in 2012 one of the facilitators of a tentative peace process between Colombia and the FARC. Santos said the tribute to Chávez was "to make real that dream he shared with us of reaching an agreement" to end Colombia's decades-long civil conflict "and see a Colombia in peace," the presidential website stated. Colombia's relations with Venezuela improved under Santos who took a softer line than his predecessor with Venezuela's socialist regime and its barely-concealed sympathies for the FARC. Santos recalled, speaking at an unspecified place, that on 10 August 2010, "on the third day of my Presidency, we sat down in...Santa Marta, face to face without any witnesses but our own consciences and sense of responsiblity," and began to discuss "the reconstruction of relations" between Colombia and Venezuela. The Colombian daily El Tiempo considered on 5 March the history of ties and contacts between Venezuela and the FARC, revealed in part by FARC documents or digital information found in such army operations as the raid on a FARC camp in Ecuador in March 2008 that killed 17 guerrillas including the commander dubbed Raúl Reyes. Such documents the daily observed indicated at the very least a personal sympathy for the FARC, which Venezuela and Chávez did not deny as vehemently as they did charges made in Colombia of their assisting the FARC with money or more. After the 2008 raid, Chávez expelled Colombia's ambassador, moved tanks the border and observed a minute's silence for the guerrillas killed on his regular, word-filled television programme Aló Presidente.