Obama Praises Colombia’s Peace Efforts With Rebels and Seeks Big Aid Increase

WASHINGTON — President Obama welcomed President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia to the White House on Thursday for a buoyant celebration of the $10 billion, 15-year American effort to help Colombia vanquish its violent drug cartels and end its festering guerrilla war.

It was also a chance for two leaders who reached out to longtime enemies to savor their success — Mr. Obama for his opening to Cuba, and Mr. Santos for his peace talks with his country’s guerrilla movement, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as the FARC.

The Colombian government is expected to sign a final peace agreement with the rebels by March 23, bringing an end to the longest civil war in Latin America. An estimated 225,000 people have been killed and six million displaced in the conflict.
Speaking in the East Room, Mr. Obama said that “a country that was on the brink of collapse is now a country on the brink of peace.” He announced that he would request $450 million in new aid for Plan Colombia, the program under which the United States has supplied Colombia with military equipment, training and economic assistance. That is an increase over the $300 million the White House had previously budgeted.

Plan Colombia, Mr. Obama said, will be renamed Peace Colombia to reflect its new purpose of helping the country keep the peace, rather than wage war. “In Colombia today,” he said, “there is hope.”

Mr. Santos described how Colombia had rebounded from the chaos of the 1990s, when large parts of the country were under the control of the guerrillas or paramilitary groups. Today, he said, it has a thriving economy and an effective policy for cracking down on the drug trade.

He recalled that Mr. Obama was one of the first leaders in whom he confided his plans to negotiate with the guerrillas. “You not only believed it was possible,” Mr. Santos said, “you encouraged me to go ahead and gave me your full, enthusiastic support.” Speaking for all people who live “south of the Rio Grande,” Mr. Santos thanked Mr. Obama for his “audacity in re-establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba.”

Mr. Santos was vocal in prodding the United States to end its half-century estrangement from Cuba, citing his own efforts to make peace as an example. A fluent English speaker with a graduate degree from Harvard, Mr. Santos made a persuasive case that the United States needed to make a move.

“Santos is such a trusted guy that when he talks to Barack Obama about Cuba, it’s easy for Obama and Ben Rhodes and other aides to listen to him,” said Julia Sweig, a senior research fellow at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin.

Cynthia Arnson, the director of the Latin America program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said Mr. Santos had been “a close ally at the same time that he has struck out on his own, in ways that have sometimes been inconvenient for the U.S.”

Plan Colombia has not been without detractors. Particularly in its early years, some critics said it was weighted too heavily toward military aid over civilian aid. The Colombian government was also criticized for disregarding human rights as it stepped up the war against the guerrillas.