Colombia's Santos accepts Nobel Prize as 'gift from heaven'
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos on Saturday accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, saying it helped make possible the "impossible dream" of ending his country's half-century-long civil war.
In his acceptance speech in Oslo, Norway, Santos described the award as a "gift from heaven" and dedicated it to all Colombians, particularly the 220,000 killed and 8 million displaced in the longest-running conflict in the Western Hemisphere. He won the prestigious award for reaching a historic peace deal with leftist rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, earlier this year. But the initial deal was narrowly rejected by Colombian voters in a shock referendum result just days before the Nobel Peace Prize announcement in October.
Many believed that ruled out Santos from winning this year's prize, but the Norwegian Nobel Committee "saw things differently," deputy chairwoman Berit Reiss-Andersen said. "In our view there was no time to lose," she said in her presentation speech. "The peace process was in danger of collapsing and needed all the international support it could get." A revised deal was approved by Colombia's Congress last week.
