The focus on healing the country took many here by surprise coming from Mr. Santos, who was defense minister in the administration of Mr. Uribe. The former two-term president transformed the country through a no-holds barred offensive against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or the FARC, a decades’ old leftist insurgency turned drug trafficking group that has been pushed deep into the country’s jungles. But Mr. Santos said his focus on healing Colombia is “building on top” of Mr. Uribe’s security achievements. “Once you start to regain control of the territory, you need to eliminate the objective factors of violence and this is one of them,” said the president, a former journalist who studied at the University of Kansas and Harvard Kennedy School. The president has also kept up pressure on the FARC. In September, forces killed Victor Suárez, also known as Mono Jojoy, the FARC’s second-incommand. Since then, however, there have few high-profile strikes. Recent polls also suggest that Colombians sense that the country’s security situation is worsening, giving ammunition to Uribe loyalists who say that Mr. Santos is lowering his guard. “In some areas it is true” that violence is up, Mr. Santos said. The president, however, maintains that renewed attacks by FARC are the result of the guerrillas being forced out of their traditional havens. Mr. Santos has changed the tenor of foreign policy in addition to domestic policy. He has
moved quickly to reset relations with Ecuador and Venezuela, with whom Mr. Uribe had a fraught relationship. Recently calling the now-ailing Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez “his new best friend,” Mr. Santos has gotten Mr. Chávez to pay back at least $600 million in money owed by Venezuela to Colombian businessmen, and arrest and extradite some members of the communist guerrillas who use Venezuela as a refuge. Mr. Santos has also re-established relations with Ecuador, which broke off diplomatic relations with Bogotá after the Colombian military attacked a rebel camp in Ecuadorian territory killing one of the FARC’s top commanders. The shift is part of a broader move to diversify Colombia from its dependence on the U.S. Mr. Santos has been courting Chinese investments more actively than his predecessor and is exploring the possibility of a joint Colombian-Chinese railroad connecting the country’s Pacific coast to the Caribbean as an alternative to the Panama Canal. During the Uribe administration, Bogotá was widely seen as the U.S.’s most dependable ally in the region. But ties have been strained due to the inability of the White House to deliver on a longpromised free-trade deal. While Mr. Santos said he was confident the U.S. trade deal could be approved soon, he warned that if the bill didn’t pass this year “it would be a major setback” because political enthusiasm for it could wane in the U.S. “It would be a lose-lose situation,” he said.