Colombian leader to receive Nobel Peace Prize alongside victims of conflict

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos traveled to Norway Thursday to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, together with representatives of the thousands of victims of the country's half-century conflict, local media reported.

Santos 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," Colombia's Caracol News website said.

"I will accept the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of all Colombians, but especially the victims of the conflict," Santos said, according to a statement released by his office.

Among those accompanying the president are 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.

Of Mira, the presidency wrote, besides her personal pains, "her 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.

Santos was bestowed the Nobel prize for his role in the peace process in Colombia. He and the leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Rodrigo Londono, signed a revised peace agreement in November, in efforts to end the country's half-century conflict, which has left 220,000 people dead, and millions of people homeless. Endi