Biden meets Colombia's re-elected President Santos

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — U.S. Vice President Joe Biden met with Colombia's president on Wednesday just three days after Juan Manuel Santos won re-election in what was widely seen as an endorsement of talks to end the Western Hemisphere's last sizable armed conflict.

Foreign Minister Maria Angela Holguin said Biden was eager to learn how the 18-month-old negotiations with the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia are going and what post-conflict role the United States can play.

Colombian officials say implementing a peace deal will be far more complicated than reaching agreement in Cuba, where the talks are being held.

Colombia has been at war for more than a half century and government peace commissioner Sergio Jaramillo says the nation will depend heavily on international donors and boots-on-the-ground verification of an eventual accord.

Santos said Monday that a peace deal would seal with "a golden brushstroke" the counter-narcotics and anti-insurgency initiative known as Plan Colombia, through which Washington has delivered more than $9 billion in mostly military aid since 2000.

Biden, as a senator, was an architect of the program, which helped Colombia badly weaken the rebels.

Publicly acknowledged U.S. police and military assistance to Colombia has dropped considerably since Santos, who was defense minister from 2006-2009, first won election in 2010. At less than $300 million this year, it is the lowest since 1998.

Biden arrived from Brazil on Tuesday night and was to depart later Wednesday for the Dominican republic after visiting Colombia's National Center for Historical Memory, which was created through a 2011 law that aims to indemnify victims of the conflict and restore stolen land.

The conflict has claimed an estimated 220,000 lives, with four in five of them civilians.

In an interview published Wednesday, Biden said Colombia is a model of economic stewardship and a constructive regional and global player.

Biden also noted concerns in the region about the U.S. National Security Agency's eavesdropping on foreign leaders, citing President Barack Obama's recently announced decision to stop spying on the communications of friendly leaders.

A document published by the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel in March listed Alvaro Uribe, Colombia's president from 2002-2010, as one of the close allies on which the U.S. spied.