THE bloodstained Plan Colombia campaign against Marxist revolutionaries in that country is to be wound up, US President Barack Obama said on Thursday.

Mr Obama welcomed Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos to the White House to discuss the ongoing peace process with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) guerilla group.

Mr Obama pledged that his administration would be Mr Santos’s “partner in waging peace.”

He announced that the 15-year, $10 billion (£7bn) Plan Colombia — ostensibly to combat drug trafficking — would be replaced by a new scheme called Peace Colombia.

Critics have long alleged that Plan Colombia, which has failed to significantly reduce cocaine production, is in reality a covert war against the Farc.

They say the true aim of the plan is to control the resources of the 15th-largest exporter of oil to the US.

Seventy-one per cent of the Plan Colombia funding went to the armed forces — more military aid than the US gives to the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean combined.

Human rights groups accused Washington of using the scheme as a cover for channelling money to right-wing death squads responsible for murdering over 4,300 peasants, trade unionists and human rights activists.

The US president said that in place of Plan Colombia, he would ask Congress for some $450 million (£310m) to help “reintegrate” guerillas and help Mr Santos’s government make inroads into the Farc’s rural strongholds.

That figure includes $390 million (£270m) in humanitarian and development aid, but tens of millions of dollars will still be spent on Pentagon counter-narcotics programmes.

Some of the money will be spent on clearing landmines over the next five years, in conjunction with Norway.

“We all know that it’s easier to start wars than to end them,” Mr Obama admitted. “But after half a century of wrenching conflict, the time has come for peace.”

Mr Santos also reiterated his request for the Marxist guerilla group to be removed from Washington’s list of terrorist organisations.

But US special envoy to the peace talks Bernard Aronson said Washington would only consider removing the Farc once it has renounced violence, given up weapons and ceased hostile actions against US citizens and interests.

He did not clarify what those interests were.