Bogota, Dec 9: Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos travelled to Norway to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, together with representatives of the thousands of victims of the country's half-century conflict with guerrillas and the narcos cartels.
The President and the leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Rodrigo Londono, signed a revised peace agreement in November, in and effort to end the country's long drawn conflict which has costed 220,000 people their lives and left millions homeless.
Santos on Thursday invited "some 40 people, many of them close friends and relatives, but also (peace) negotiators and about 10 representatives of the victims of the conflict", Xinhua news agency reported.
"I will accept the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of all Colombians, but especially the victims of the conflict," Santos said.
Among those accompanying the President were Pastora Mira Garcia, a community activist who lost much of her family and still helped both the victims and those fighting the civil war, Leiner Palacios, a survivor of massacre, Fabiola Perdomo, a widow of a deputy who was kidnapped and killed by the rebels, and Ingrid Betancourt, a former presidential candidate and high-profile kidnapped victim.
According to the presidency, besides her personal pains, "Mira's struggle for others, her social activism, her infinite capacity for forgiveness and reconciliation (to the point of providing shelter and first aid to the attacker of one of her relatives)… make her stand out among those invited to the Nobel" ceremony.
