The figures from the country’s electoral board showed that Santos won 50.95 percent of the vote, compared to the 45 percent for conservative Oscar Ivan Zuluaga. Another 4.03 percent were declared to have been blank ballots.

Santos’ win is seen as an endorsement of his ongoing peace talks with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebel group. Santos had argued that Colombians had to choose between “the end of the conflict, or an endless conflict.”

Zuluaga, who has long been opposed to the peace talks, called during the election campaigning for stricter conditions as a pre-requisite to any deal.

Santos has said he expects a deal to be signed by the end of this year.

The Colombian government and the FARC have been engaged in peace talks in Cuba’s capital, Havana, since November 2012, in an attempt to end a decades-long armed conflict.

The FARC is Latin America’s oldest insurgent group and has been fighting the government since 1964. The rebel organization is thought to have around 8,000 fighters operating across a large swathe of the eastern jungles of the Andean nation.

Bogota estimates that 600,000 people have been killed and more than 4.5 million others have been displaced due to the fighting.

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http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2014/06/16/367174/colombias-santos-wins-reelection/