President Juan Manuel Santos has been cultivating high-level contacts in an attempt to arrange a meeting with his U.S. counterpart Barack Obama while visiting Washington and New York, Caracol Radio reported Tuesday.
“Yes there is a possibility that President Juan Manuel Santos will extend his stay for one day in the United States for some high-level appointments which could be held in New York or Washington, for the moment we cannot provide more detail,” government spokeswomen Adriana Vargas told the radio station.
According to the radio station, this meeting could encourage progress in the ratification of a free trade agreement between the U.S and Colombia. So far the process has been stalled as Obama has been reluctant to present the free trade agreement to Congress without improvement in Colombia’s labor rights.
In an interview last week, Santos called these demands not only reasonable but actively desirable.
The Colombian President in in the United States where he attended a forum at Brown University on Tuesday and will chair the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday