If you go around Colombia or Latin America, without doubt you will find that 80 per cent of the time, you're discussing the past and only 20 per cent about the future.

I say that building peace is like building a cathedral. You have to have a solid base, and then you do it brick by brick. But the process is irreversible. There's no way back.

I think that we are trying to move towards the First World slowly but surely. But we must do a good job for the people left way behind. That's why extreme poverty, for us, is a priority.

It's in the interest of the U.S. to maintain a strong democracy in Colombia.

Even if every major government were to slap huge taxes on carbon fuels - which is not going to happen - it wouldn't do much to halt climate change any time soon. What it would do is cost us hundreds of billions - if not trillions - of dollars, because alternative energy technologies are not yet ready to take up the slack.

The Cold War went on for so long that it bred a kind of worldwide military establishment. Even when budgets went down in the early and mid-nineties, it didn't really affect it.

We must defend democracy using its own mechanisms, through explaining and exemplifying its merits rather than through the heavy-handed and arbitrary silencing of its critics. This is how we will build a sustainable alternative to the contorted worldview of extremists.

I want to be part of a family which wants to improve Indian democracy.