The United States and Europe have forgotten about Latin America, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos said in an interview with French newspaper Le Monde Saturday.
The Colombian president is set to travel to France to meet with his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy and to lobby a Colombian membership to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
Using the words of Brazil’s former President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, Santos told Le Monde that “Barack Obama has forgotten about Latin America,” adding to this: “Europe too.”
Santos wants to use his meeting with Sarkozy to “talk about education, trade, investment and technology transfer,” to give body to the bilateral ties that for a long time were dominated by the captivity of French-Colombian politician Ingrid Betancourt.
The Colombian president told France’s leading newspaper that Europe should get more involved in the fight against drug trafficking now that ” the achieved success against the big Colombian cartels has become a problem for Mexico, Central America and Brazil.”
Following Santos’ visit to Paris, he will travel to Switzerland to attend the annual World Economic Forum in Davos.