Bogota: Juan Manuel Santos, sworn in on Saturday as Colombia's 59th president, vowed to cement security gains but declared himself open to dialogue with rebels in hopes of ending the western hemisphere's only armed conflict.
He also got to work immediately mending frayed relations with neighbours Venezuela and Ecuador.
Although he was invited, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was not among the 14 Latin American and Caribbean leaders, including Felipe Calderon of Mexico and Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil, attending Saturday's ceremony.
Also absent was Chavez's close ally President Evo Morales of Bolivia.
Chavez broke diplomatic ties with Colombia two weeks ago after outgoing hard-line President Alvaro Uribe's government presented the Organisation of American States with video of alleged Colombian rebel camps in Venezuela.
Chavez did, however, send his foreign minister to the ceremony.
In Caracas later, after he heard Santos express a desire for improved relations, Chavez said he is ready "to turn the page and look to a future with the hope of peace, brotherhood and full integration between Colombia and Venezuela".
President Rafael Correa of Ecuador did attend the inauguration, though he severed ties with Uribe's government in 2008 after the Colombian military raided a guerrilla camp a mile inside his country.
Santos, a 58-year-old economist, set a new, less confrontational tone. He is a scion of one of Colombia's leading political families. Uribe is a rancher's son from Medellin, the country's second city.
And the mood was certainly more relaxed than Uribe's 2002 inauguration, when homemade mortars lobbed at the presidential palace by leftist rebels killed 19 people, most of them indigents who were blocks away.
Santos indicated his presidency would take a broader approach to ending Colombia's nearly half-century conflict — focusing for one on attacking the nation's deep-seated inequalities at their roots through social programmes and job creation.
He signalled an unwillingness to talk peace with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, until it frees its hostages, halts "terrorist acts" and stops recruiting child soldiers and planting land mines.
"But at the same time I want to reiterate: The door to dialogue is not locked," Santos said. "It is possible to have a Colombia at peace, a Colombia without guerrillas, and we're going to prove it!"
Ecuador ties: Hard disks handed over
One of the first things Juan Manuel Santos did as Colombian president was to hand over to Ecuador President Rafael Correa the hard disks from the computers of rebel chief Raul Reyes that the Colombians seized in 2008 after the Colombian military raided a guerrilla camp a mile inside Ecuador, killing a rebel chief and 25 others
As a condition for fully restoring relations, Correa had asked for the hard disks, which include electronic messages indicating leftist rebels contributed to his 2006 election campaign. The countries' foreign ministers were to meet yesterday to work on returning ambassadors to each of their capitals.
