Bodyguard scandal a threat to peace in Colombia
In the 1980s, peace talks to end Colombia's long civil war instead triggered bloodshed. As the door opened for greater leftist power, thousands of former guerrillas, communist militants and trade unionists were gunned down by paramilitary death squads, sometimes in collaboration with state security forces, derailing the peace process and entrenching arguments for armed struggle.
Today, the government is pursuing peace again, and is promising leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia that it will protect them and their fighters once they've laid down their weapons.
President Juan Manuel Santos is having a tough time persuading the rebels they'll be safe.
If current negotiations end the 50-year-old Marxist uprising, the job of protecting the peace likely will fall to the National Protection Unit, or UNP, a 3-year-old government agency that keeps watch over politicians, judges, high-profile activists and members of other historically threatened groups.
http://news.yahoo.com/bodyguard-scandal-threat-peace-colombia-040403215.html
