COLOMBIA'S NEW LEADER SEEN AS GOOD FOR U.S.

BOGOTA, COLOMBIA - The fiery socialist Hugo Chavez of Venezuela used
to deride Juan Manuel Santos as the No. 1 "little Yankee." Now, as
Colombia's new president, Santos calls Chavez "my new best friend."

It has been an abrupt shift for Colombia, Washington's most stalwart
ally in the hemisphere and the recipient of $9 billion in U.S. aid
over the past three American administrations. But it has not been the
only shift. In his four months in power, Santos has taken a series of
stands strikingly at odds with those adopted by his predecessor,
Alvaro Uribe, who was closely tied to the United States.

In two recent interviews with The Washington Post, Santos, 59, said
he realizes his moves have raised eyebrows, as much here as in
Washington, which has been a steady partner in Colombia's fight
against drug traffickers and a Marxist insurgency. Santos's landslide
victory in a June election, after all, was seen as a message of
support for the policies of Uribe.

"They thought that I was going to be a surrogate of President Uribe
and simply follow his policies. That was absurd from the beginning,"
Santos said. "Uribe is Uribe and Santos is Santos, and Santos has a
different approach."

But some current and former American officials say they think the
change in power in Colombia has left the United States better off,
because many South American leaders viewed Uribe as overly
militaristic and had come to distrust him.

In particular, Santos's decision to heal the long rift between
Colombia and Venezuela has won support from the Obama administration,
which sees it as playing to the United States' benefit. The approach
effectively left Chavez with little case to be made that Washington
planned to use Colombia as a platform to invade his country, an
argument that Chavez once frequently used to whip up his followers.

The Diplomat

Santos is "doing something that's absolutely fantastic," Myles
Frechette, a former U.S. ambassador to Bogota, said of Santos. "He's
taking Colombia into the 21st century diplomatically. He's gone out
there to engage with the Brazilians and all the others."

Santos has good relations with both parties on Capitol Hill, and no
U.S. lawmakers have criticized his approach. But Republicans who work
on Latin American policy have disparaged the Obama administration for
being too soft on Chavez.

"They think he should be more confrontational and slap Chavez down,"
Frechette said.

Buoyed by an approval rating topping 70 percent, the Santos
administration is pushing legislative initiatives to compensate
victims of Colombia's decades-long internal conflict, including those
targeted by the state's security forces. Officials are also working
to return to poor farmers up to 10 million acres of land stolen by
corrupt politicians and local warlords. One bill winding its way
through the country's legislature would use mining royalties to help
fund public education.

Rafael Pardo, a former senator who ran against Santos for the
presidency, said Uribe would not have pursued those policies.

A tough conservative who looked to Washington for funding and
guidance, Uribe worked tirelessly over his eight years as president
to weaken a guerrilla group once thought invincible. But his policies
were seen as favoring the elites, particularly wealthy landowners.
His administration was also tarnished by scandals, the details of
which continue to surface, and he left office with Colombia largely
isolated in the region.

"Santos came from the Uribe administration, but he is executing a
government completely different in style and in content," Pardo said.

Adapting to the Times

Some political analysts say the changes spring from a background
markedly different from Uribe's.

While the former president comes from Colombia's conservative and
influential ranching class, Santos is from a Bogota elite often at
odds with rural landowners. After spending much of his life studying
and working overseas, he held ministerial posts in successive
governments, displaying what analysts have called a chameleon-like
ability to adapt to the current political mood.

"You know, politics is an art," said Fabian Sanabria of Bogota's
National University. "It is knowing how to navigate, knowing how to
change when you have to change. He knows that."

As defense minister until last year, Santos ordered unprecedentedly
ambitious blows against Colombia's biggest guerrilla organization,
including the 2008 aerial bombardment of a jungle camp across the
border in Ecuador. That strike killed a top guerrilla chief but
triggered a diplomatic crisis that embroiled much of the continent.

Now, as president, Santos has shown a softer, gentler side, pressing
to reestablish diplomatic relations with Ecuador, whose president was
furious over the bombing. Santos has handed over secret computer
files that Colombian commandos had seized from the rebels; Ecuador's
president, Rafael Correa, had requested the files to help his
government investigate the strike.

"Juan Manuel Santos has been a welcome surprise," Correa told a
Colombian television interviewer during a recent visit to Bogota. "I
think he is a person with great human warmth."

The Shift on Chavez

The biggest diplomatic priority, though, has been to reestablish
relations with Venezuela. That task fell to a respected career
diplomat, Maria Angela Holguin, who had resigned as Uribe's
ambassador to the United Nations, citing political meddling in the
diplomatic service.

"We were in the worst possible situation with Chavez," Santos said in
one of the two interviews with The Post. "No communication, no
relations, no trade, and we were starting to talk about war, which is
for me inconceivable."

Santos recounted how in his days as a journalist - he is a scion of a
newspaper family here - he had criticized Chavez's approach to
democracy. And as defense minister, he filtered intelligence
information that seemed to show Venezuelan support for the guerrillas
in Colombia.

Indeed, with concern swirling in Bogota about a possible military
threat from Venezuela, Santos had also lobbied the United States for
a security guarantee similar to that enjoyed by Israel and
spearheaded a defense agreement that would have given the United
States access to Colombian military bases, which rankled many Latin
American leaders.

"Now I am not a journalist. Now I am not the minister of defense. I
am the president of Colombia," Santos said. "I decided to forget what
we had told each other - because it went both ways - and start a new relation."

In the end, the Obama administration never offered the guarantees
that Colombia wanted, and Santos appears to have shelved the base agreement.

There is also a new outlook toward Washington, where some lawmakers
were surprised when Santos approved the extradition to Venezuela of a
suspected cocaine trafficker, Walid Makled, even though U.S.
prosecutors had also requested his extradition. Santos said he wants
a more active partnership with Washington on issues including trade
and resolving regional diplomatic spats.

"We want to enhance our agenda, get out of the traditional points of
the agenda that were only concentrated on drug trafficking and the
fight against terrorism," Santos said.

Adam Isacson, an analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America, a
group that tracks U.S. policy in the region, said the Santos and
Obama administrations have new priorities that alter the long
collaboration between Bogota and Washington.

Mexico, with its drug-related crisis spiraling out of control, may
require more long-term U.S. attention and funding, Isacson said. He
added that Colombia and the United States also say they need to place
a greater priority on forging economic and diplomatic ties with the
leading regional power, Brazil.

"I don't see the two countries saying no to each other on many
things," Isacson said. "But I think, in general, both countries are
going to be diversifying their relations in the region."