Colombia connection: The UK's discreet role

Colombian and British flags on the Mall in London, celebrating a 200-year-old friendship

Tuesday sees the first ever state visit by a Colombian president to the UK. Nobel Peace Prize laureate, President Juan Manuel Santos is visiting for three days as an official guest of Her Majesty The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh. 

He will have a working lunch with Prime Minister Theresa May, visit Belfast and attend events at Mansion House, the Natural History Museum and his old university, the LSE. For two nights running, the London Eye will be lit up in Colombia's national colours: red, yellow and blue, a gesture to the 200-year-old friendship between the two countries.


For a country often associated in many people's minds with intractable drugs wars and occasional dubious practices by security forces, this celebration of an alliance may come as a surprise.

Despite huge improvements in both security and the economy, Colombia is currently ranking neck-and-neck with Peru as the world's biggest producer of cocaine. Latest estimates put production at more than 100,000 hectares, which is nearly double what it was four years ago.

As home to the western hemisphere's longest running guerrilla insurgency - the Farc - hopes had been high that six years of peace talks in Havana would end in a historic deal.

It was duly done, the president shook hands with his longstanding foe, the Farc's Marxist leader, but the country rejected it in a national ballot by the slimmest of margins. Although the ceasefire still stands, President Santos has warned that time is running out and that a revised deal needs to be in place by Christmas.