Oslo: Colombia’s peace deal is a model for countries at war like Syria, President Juan Manuel Santos said Saturday as he accepted his Nobel Peace Prize.

Earlier in the day in Oslo, Santos said in his acceptance speech that the Colombian peace accord, signed on November 24 to end five decades of conflict, was a ‘model for the resolution of armed conflicts that have yet to be resolved around the world.’

‘It proves that what, at first, seems impossible, through perseverance may become possible even in Syria or Yemen or South Sudan,’ Santos said as he collected his prize at a lavish ceremony at Oslo’s City Hall, decked out in red, orange and white roses and carnations imported from Colombia for the occasion.

Santos, who wore a dove lapel pin on his dark suit and whose wife donned a white dress with a peace symbol cut-out in the back, said his government was itself inspired by other peace processes in Northern Ireland, South Africa, the Middle East and Central America.

After a first peace deal was rejected in a popular vote on October 2, the rebels and government negotiated a new accord to end the conflict, which has killed more than 260,000 people, left tens of thousands missing and forced nearly seven million to flee their homes.

‘The Colombian peace agreement is a ray of hope in a world troubled by so many conflicts and so much intolerance,’ he said.

Hard part yet to come

Yet in an interview with AFP, Santos acknowledged that the hardest part of the country’s peace process was yet to come.

The period ahead ‘is a more difficult phase than the (negotiation) process itself, and will require a lot of effort, perseverance and humility,’ he said.

‘A lot of coordination efforts will also be needed... to bring the benefits of peace to the regions that have suffered the most in the conflict,’ he added.

He also said he could offer no guarantees there would be a peace deal in place with Colombia’s second-largest rebel group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), before the end of his mandate in 2018.

‘I will do my best but to establish a time frame is always counter-productive in negotiations of this sort,’ he said.

In a speech at the ceremony, Berit Reiss-Andersen, deputy chairwoman of the Nobel committee, all sides in Colombia to ‘continue on the road to reconciliation.’

The Nobel prize consists of a gold medal, a diploma and a cheque for eight million Swedish kronor (824,000 euros, $871,000), a sum Santos promised to donate to the victims of the war.