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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: The Colombian President, Juan Manuel Santos, has pledged to deliver peace by Christmas in his country, if he manages it it will end the world’s longest running war.  He is going to be in the UK next week on a state visit in what will be Theresa May’s first time as host to a state visit.  Well I’m joined now by the Colombian Ambassador to London, Nestor Osorio Londoño, very good to see you, Your Excellency.  Tell me first about the peace process because the last time we spoke it had been narrowly rejected by a referendum in your country, is it back on track?

NESTOR OSORIO: Indeed, since that obstacle or that event that took place with our plebiscite, our kind of referendum, immediately President Santos convened all the forces of opposition, all those that have been campaigning against a no and he took together all the proposals and the ideas of these groups, areas in which they thought the agreements were short and made a synthesis of this, called his negotiating team and sent them to Havana to start negotiating with Farc to see what degree of a new flexibility could be given.  We have been negotiating for five years and we reached a point at which we thought it was the maximum possible but the Farc as well have received a message that half of the voters say it is not enough, we want more justice, we need to redesign the participation in politics so those are the areas in which we are working at the moment and we are not going to stop negotiation in Havana …

DM: So you see progress there.  When ultimately will it be put back to the Colombian people?

NESTOR OSORIO: We will see how fast we can move.  The President has said that he hopes that by no later than December we could have a new agreement with the revisions that have taken place and of course many options are open but I think another referendum, it is a bit unlikely because that could give room to more polarisation in the country or a different approach so if he has a consensus of the political forces that have contributed to the proposals to reform the agreements I think there will be a way through to constitutional institutions of congress in Colombia.

DM: There is still quite a lot of ground then to cover. Do you subscribe to the view on the Nobel Peace Prize for the President that the Nobel committee may have jumped the gun a bit here, that there’s still work to do and yet here he is, a Nobel Laureate?

NESTOR OSORIO: Well I don't think they jumped the gun because the name of President Santos had been under consideration for the Nobel Prize for a while and what happened here is the day after the referendum, President Santos came probably saying I recognise what has happened, I understand that part of the people in Colombia do not agree with this agreement, I invite them all to participate.  We lost the referendum by 0.4%, 50,000 votes.  It was a democratic way to show how much we respect our institutions and to encase with that kind of defeat was quite [inaudible] and people in Oslo I would say recognised the efforts and they give the boost to carry on because the President says I am not going to surrender on this, I am going to continue to search for peace and that I think is the context of the whole prize.

DM: Let’s come to London now and the state visit and of course post-Brexit vote, so much interest now in opening up trade corridors and bringing down barriers to trade with other countries. Looking at the list here of percentages of Colombia’s imports from major EU countries, Britain is way behind Spain, Germany, France and Italy.  Are there real opportunities here to do some substantive talking about trade?

NESTOR OSORIO: I think the room is open to improve and that is part of the nature of this state visit and the consolidation of our relations, is that there are very important investments of Britain in Colombia in the oil, gas and mining sector. We export a lot of coffee, bananas, pineapples, fruits and different manufactures and the commercial balance is favourable to us at this very moment.  We have to design with the British government a kind of road map for the next ten years in which trade, investment and tourism is going to play a very important role both ways and regardless of Brexit, whatever development in Britain and Europe is taken, we are determined to increase and improve that relation and to reinforce the two ways of business because Latin America today, Colombia appears together with Mexico, Peru and Chile, we form a system of modern integration, the Pacific Alliance, and we look like liked-minded countries, open to trade, ready to facilitate movement of persons and capital and services so we think that we will be a very important reference for Britain to continue to open the ways in the world.

DM: And post-Brexit, when Britain does leave the European Union, how quickly could a country like your own, what’s your assessment of how quickly a deal could be done with the UK on trade?

NESTOR OSORIO: Well we have already a free trade agreement with the European community in which Britain participated and that was an agreement that was signed two years ago so it is a fresh agreement. I think from there we will have a starting point, the momentum and of course that is a minimum basis to continue to improve concessions on a free trade agreement with favourable countries.

DM: And I just want to ask you finally, Ambassador, on your attitude, your country’s attitude to what’s going on to the north of you in the United States and if it is to be President Trump what would your attitude be, given what’s been said about Mexicans and those South American countries further to the south?

NESTOR OSORIO: Well that’s an expected question in the state visit of President Santos.  No, we are following this campaign in the United States with a lot of amazement about the way the campaign has been conducted and we don’t know exactly the real politics of Mr Trump can be regarding Latin America or Colombia.  The Obama government has been tremendously supportive of our peace process as has been the United Kingdom.  With the Clintons we have a story of support, of friendship, Bill Clinton especially was the one who established Colombia to start recovering and to fight against guerrillas so we will see, we cannot take any position at the moment.

DM: Well thanks for giving us your thoughts on that, Ambassador, very good to see you and best of luck with the state visit.