OSLO, Norway (AP) — The Latest on the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos (all times local):
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos won the Nobel Peace Prize Friday for his efforts to end a civil war that killed more than 200,000 Colombians.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee said the award should also be seen “as a tribute to the Colombian people who, despite great hardships and abuses, have not given up hope of a just peace, and to all the parties who have contributed to the peace process.
In 1973, Santos graduated from University of Kansas with a Bachelor in Economics and Business Administration. While at KU he was also a member of Delta Upsilon fraternity, according to his bio.
Santos says he’s deeply honored by the Nobel Peace Prize, which he dedicated to the people of his country.
“I receive this with great emotion,” Santos told the Nobel Foundation in an audio interview posted on its Facebook account.
“This is a great, great recognition for my country,” he said. “I am eternally grateful.”
“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 that have suffered in this war that we are on the verge of ending.”
The Nobel Committee did not cite his counterpart in peace negotiations, Rodrigo Londono, the leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
Santos and Londono signed a peace deal last month ending a half-century of hostilities only to see their efforts collapse following a shock vote against the agreement in a referendum six days later.
4:55 p.m.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is hailing Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, named winner of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, “for his courageous efforts to try to bring peace to Colombia.”
He said from Washington that he hopes that in the wake of the prize “this can still work out and get over the hurdles that remain,” referring to efforts to reach a peace deal acceptable to all sides.
Kerry added that he would speak to former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe later Friday.
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4:30 p.m.
Former hostage Ingrid Betancourt says the Colombian rebel group that kept her captive for six years deserves to be included in the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to President Juan Manuel Santos.
Ingrid Betancourt told The Associated Press during an interview in Paris that “it’s hard for me to say it but I have to be just and, even though they were my captors. She says “I think that it’s true that they transformed themselves.”
Betancourt is a dual French-Colombian citizen. She was campaigning for Colombia’s presidency when she was kidnapped in 2002.
She was released in 2008 after six years as a hostage of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.
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3:45 p.m.
Negotiators for Colombia’s government and largest rebel movement say they’re taking steps to guarantee a cease-fire doesn’t unravel while the two sides work together to save a peace accord defeated in a referendum.
At a joint press conference in Havana the two sides read a joint statement in which they pledged to listen to those who voted against the peace deal to “define quickly” a solution to the impasse in accordance with a recent constitutional court ruling.
The statement says: “The proposed adjustments and precisions that come about from this process will be discussed between the government and the FARC to provide guarantees to everyone.”
The two sides invited the United Nations to begin monitoring a cease-fire already in place along the terms established in the accord so that rebel fighters aren’t at risk.
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3:30 p.m.
Norwegian Nobel Committee Chairwoman Kaci Kullman Five says the peace prize to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos shouldn’t be seen as a rebuke of the referendum in which voters rejected his peace deal with left-wing rebels.
“It is really not meant as a rebuke,” Five told The Associated Press. “We strongly underline the respect we have for the voice of the Colombian people.”
She said many Colombians who voted against the deal weren’t against the peace process, just “this specific agreement.”
Even though Santos won the prize alone, she said the award was also meant as “encouragement” to the FARC rebels.
“Giving the prize to Santos is not a belittlement to any of the other parties,” she said. “The FARC is obviously a very important part of this process.”
She noted that the FARC has made “important concessions and that (rebel leader Rodrigo) Londono stated after the referendum that the FARC reiterates this position, that it will use only words as weapons to build towards the future.”
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3:10 p.m.
The top leader of Colombia’s largest rebel group is congratulating President Juan Manuel Santos for the Nobel Peace Prize, along with the other participants in talks to end the country’s long-running conflict.
The FARC leader known as Timoleon Jimenez says on his Twitter account that “peace would be impossible” without the efforts of Santos and the guarantors from Cuba and Norway, as well as participants from Venezuela and Chile.
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2:30 p.m.
European Union policy chief Federica Mogherini says she is deeply moved that Colombian President Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos won the Nobel Peace Prize.
“Let me say how happy I am personally and all the European Union is for this prize that recognizes the determination, the vision of the great man of peace,” she said Friday during a visit to the Romanian capital, Bucharest.
She said she hoped it would lead to greater peace in Colombia, noting that the EU “has played an important role and continues to play an important role” in the peace process.
“I feel deep emotion … and I wanted this share this publicly,” she said, adding that the EU would continue support the peace process.
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2:20 p.m.
President Juan Manuel Santos says the Nobel Peace Prize should serve as an incentive for all Colombians to rally behind a stalled peace accord with leftist rebels.
Santos said he was notified of the Nobel committee’s decision by his son, Martin, who woke him up before dawn Friday.
He dedicated the prize to his fellow Colombians, especially the victims of the long conflict, and called on his detractors who defeated the peace deal in a referendum Sunday to join him in securing an end to hostilities.
“I invite everyone to join our strength, our minds and our hearts in this great national endeavor so that we can win the most important prize of all: peace in Colombia,” Santos said alongside his wife during his first public appearance since winning the Nobel.
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2:15 p.m.
Nobel laureate Juan Manuel Santos’ arch rival and predecessor is swallowing his pride and congratulating the president.
Colombians widely credit conservative hardliner Alvaro Uribe for forcing the FARC rebels to the negotiating table by leading a U.S.-backed military offensive that pushed them to the edges of the jungle during his 2002-2010 presidency.
Santos was Uribe’s defense minister most of those years but the two later angrily split and Uribe led the “no” campaign against the peace deal in Sunday’s referendum.
“I congratulate President Santos for the Nobel,” Uribe said on Twitter. “I hope it leads to a chance in the accords that are damaging for our democracy.”
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2:10 p.m.
The previous Nobel Peace Prize winner from Latin America has some advice for Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos: don’t lose hope.
Guatemalan indigenous rights activist Rigoberta Menchu won the Nobel in 1992, but it wasn’t until 1996 that her Central American nation put an end to the three-decade civil war.
Speaking to Bogota’s Blu Radio, Menchu said that with the peace prize Santos will now be able to count on broad international support to see the peace process through after the deal he struck with the FARC rebels was narrowly rejected by voters in a referendum Sunday.
“This is an extraordinary stage for Colombia in its intense search for peace,” Menchu said. “Santos now has a lot to do to take Colombians down the path of peace.”
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2:05 p.m.
Never mind about the Nobel Peace Prize, the head of the FARC says the only reward he wants is an end to Colombia’s entrenched conflict.
Rodrigo Londono, who was overlooked by the Nobel committee, reacted to the news of the prize for Colombian leader Juan Manuel Santos with a mercurial message on Twitter that’s bound to lend itself to multiple interpretations.
He said that the only prize the rebels want is peace with social justice and “Colombia without paramilitaries, without retaliations and without lies.”
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2 p.m.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says the choice of Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos for the Nobel Peace Prize is a “timely message” to all people working toward national reconciliation.
Ban said the awarding of the prize “tells them to keep working until they have brought the peace process to a successful conclusion.”
In a statement from Hamburg, Germany, Ban said Friday that the failure of Sunday’s referendum in Colombia on the peace plan “should not divide the millions of Colombians who strive to build a peaceful country.”
He added: “This award says to them: you have come too far to turn back now. The peace process should inspire our world.”
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Santos says he’s deeply honored by the Nobel Peace Prize, which he dedicated to the people of his country.
“I receive this with great emotion,” Santos told the Nobel Foundation in an audio interview posted on its Facebook account.
“This is a great, great recognition for my country,” he said. “I am eternally grateful.”
“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 that have suffered in this war that we are on the verge of ending.”
