JUAN MANUEL SANTOS

Ten years ago, we were seen as a virtually failed state, but today we are a vibrant democracy. You can walk safely through the streets of Bogota these days.

Europe would be well advised to pay more attention to Latin America. The emerging economies are the engines of the global economy. Colombia has done too little to improve its reputation in Europe.

I remember in 2000, when President Clinton came to Cartagena just before Plan Colombia started, the country was on the verge of becoming a failed state. Today, we are one of the most solid democracies, where institutions are working, where the scandals such as false positives have come to light because of those functioning institutions.

Good friends don't have to visit each other every day.

Uribe and I have very good relations. I owe him loyalty, I admire him, he did great things for our country, and I think that because of what he did, I can now concentrate on different issues, different from what he concentrated on.

Colombia has a huge variety of plant and animal species, and we have enormous potential. Small and mid-sized companies should come to Colombia. From here, they have access to the entire Latin American market.

Democracy is like three oxen pulling a plough. The oxen are the independent powers, but you have to walk in the same direction; otherwise, you cannot plough and that is what was happening in Colombia. One ox was walking in one direction, the other in another direction, so the democracy was not working.

I have had extremely good relations with the United States and with both parties (Republicans and Democrats), and I hope to continue to have these good relations, which I, again repeating, do not consider to be mutually exclusive with having good relations with Venezuela or Ecuador or whichever country in South America.

It's in the interest of the U.S. to maintain a strong democracy in Colombia.

The media can be a megaphone for terrorists to communicate their message. The media should put things in perspective and context and not instinctively do what the terrorists want the media to do.

We are attacking corruption and every corrupt person—no matter how important he is—will go to jail.

He [previous President Uribe] has criticized this government for unveiling a lot of corruption: he thinks it is an attack on his government. But I have said no, it is not an attack on his government, it is an attack on the corrupt people, and I will continue to do that.

I’m going to abolish the DAS in the next 3 or 4 months. I want to create a new and completely different intelligence agency. By abolishing the DAS we can take away the bad culture that has developed.

If the United States does well [economically], then the whole world does well.

Whatever works should be copied.

War is far more spectacular than peace. Peace, on the other hand, requires patience, discretion and determination in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.

Simply to have peace brings huge investment.

Believe me, it is much harder to make peace than war.

There is land in Colombia, fortunately, for everybody. We don't have to expropriate land from people who are cultivating that land legally.

There have been many examples in the world of people doing crazy things because they want to keep war going.

Anybody who doesn't see the impact of climate change is really, I would say, myopic. They don't see the reality. It's so evident that we are destroying Mother Earth. This is not the problem of one country or a few countries: it is the problem of mankind. We need to work together to stop this. Otherwise, our future generations will simply disappear.

We want to be a country with a competitive edge in the world. And a country with a solid democracy. To do that, we need to attack the social problems, and extreme poverty is probably the worst of those.

That's what peace processes are about - changing bullets for votes.

During the Cold War, tensions between the West and the Soviet Union affected virtually all countries worldwide. As a result, throughout Latin America, guerrilla groups emerged, seeking to destabilize military dictatorships and attain democracy, freedom, and policy reform - goals that they believed could not be achieved peacefully.

That is why every military officer fights - so that there may be peace.