SCRAPPY AMBASSADOR DEFENDS COLOMBIA:

Since Her Arrival In Canada, Fanny Kertzman's Outspoken Style Has Thrust
Her Into A Hateful War Of Words

Colombia's ambassador to Canada is reading what she calls her "hate mail."

It's an e-mail titled "Urgent Action -- The Kertzman Affair" and is from
the Toronto-based Inter-Church Committee on Human Rights in Latin America.
It urges supporters to begin a letter-writing campaign against the
ambassador for what it calls her "libelous attack" on the group.

"It's kind of confusing," Fanny Kertzman says with a smile, "because
'affair' in Colombia has a different sense."

The diminutive 41-year-old Kertzman has been posted to Canada for just five
months but she has butted heads with Canadian churches, human-rights groups
and average citizens. She has been a frequent contributor to the letters'
pages of Canadian newspapers, including The Citizen, where she has offered
a vigorous defence of her government's policies in its continuing struggle
in the 37-year, cocaine-fuelled civil war in her country.

"When I have to be a diplomat, I am," she says. "And when I have to speak
my mind, I do. If I get attacked by someone, I have to fight back. I cannot
be a diplomat."

Ms. Kertzman has survived a life of dangerous brushes with Colombia's
powerful drug industry. She grew up in the heartland of Colombia's cocaine
trade, in the midst of shootings and bombings. She received death threats
after spending two years fighting smugglers and money launderers as head of
Colombia's customs agency, a job she left last year. She asked for a
diplomatic posting to Canada to protect her family.

"Even though in Colombia my life was in danger I was not afraid. It was my
husband and my kids putting pressure on me. They wanted to leave because
they were afraid for my life and for their lives as well," she explains, "I
am not a coward."

Ms. Kertzman had no idea she would be transformed into a fighter of another
kind -- in a war of words she says has descended in outright hatred and
personal attack -- when she came to Canada last November to serve as
Colombia's ambassador.

She has proved to be a formidable combatant in a series of written
exchanges with the

Inter-Church Committee, Amnesty International, and others who have aired
their condemnation of her country in letters to various newspapers.

Recently, a letter writer in The Citizen took her to task for "her
shamelessly sanitized 'official story'," of the "horrific daily abuses" in
Colombia.

The letter ends by saying, "the civilians who claim to govern Colombia --
and those who represent them abroad -- only compound their complicity in
these crimes."

Comments such as those, says Ms. Kertzman, are ignorant and below the belt.

"He's saying that I'm complicit in these crimes," she says. "It's not
exactly like an exchange of ideas. It's like hate mail ... because these
people are really hating me."

Ms. Kertzman admits her country has problems. It has a drug crisis and
violence is out of control. But, she contends, it is not a banana republic.
Her government is democratically elected. And, she stresses, it does not
condone the actions of paramilitary death squads, despite what groups such
as Amnesty, Human Rights Watch or the U.S. state department may claim.

The Colombian government of President Andres Pastrana is opposed by two
leftist guerrilla groups, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and
the National Liberation Army. Right-wing death squads -- paramilitaries --
oppose them and have been linked to the country's armed forces, in essence
its government, by the human-rights groups.

Canadian diplomats are among those from about a dozen countries trying to
negotiate a peaceful end to the decades-old civil war.

Last year, almost 26,000 Colombians were killed in political violence,
leaving about five-per cent of the population -- two million people --
homeless.

Canada enjoys full diplomatic relations with Colombia. Mr. Pastrana will be
one of 34 hemispheric leaders to attend the Summit of Americas in Quebec
City in three weeks. Colombia is Canada's second largest trading partner
after the U.S. Much of the $7-billion trade is in telecommunications.

Ms. Kertzman vigorously disputes the connection human-rights groups have
drawn between paramilitaries and her government. She concedes there have
been links between certain aspects of the country's armed forces and death
squads, but that the extent is exaggerated.

Human-rights groups draw a clearer link between the armed forces and the
paramilitaries.

Last year, Amnesty International stated "there is conclusive evidence that
paramilitary groups continue to operate with the tacit or active support of
the Colombian armed forces. Evidence has also emerged that Colombian army
personnel, trained by U.S. Special Forces, have been implicated in serious
human-rights violations, including the massacre of civilians." A recent
Human Rights Watch report estimated paramilitaries were responsible for 80
per cent of the human-rights violations in the country last year.

The Colombian government has its own statistics, which reverses the claims
made by Human Rights Watch. The government says 80 per cent of the violence
is caused by rebel guerrillas.

The difference of opinion, says Ms. Kertzman, underscores a basic truth
about Colombia that most of her Canadian critics fail to grasp.

"There are no bad guys or good guys. My description of Colombia is many
different shades of gray. It's such a violent country, the threats come
from everywhere. Sometimes, you can't even tell who your enemies are."

Ms. Kertzman grew up amid a cacophony of gunshots, explosions and shady
characters. One of four children, she is the daughter of Romanian Jews who
immigrated to Colombia in 1936 to escape Nazi persecution. She adapted to
her violent environment in Medellin, the place that lent its name to one of
the country's fiercest drug cartels. She moved on to the University of
Bogota, where she earned an economics degree.

After a stint in an economic think-thank, she spent 11 years editing and
writing for two economics magazines she helped create, Dinero and La Nota.
Burned out from the rigours of journalism, she delved into politics in 1998
and became a fundraiser for Mr. Pastrana. He rewarded her efforts by
appointing her to the head of the country's customs and excise agency.

Targeting the pocket books of smugglers and money launderers soon made Ms.
Kertzman a target herself.

In February 2000, after 18 months on the job, her first death threat
arrived in the mail. It told her to resign or be killed and threatened the
lives of her husband and two teenage children. Thus began nine months of
living in a security cocoon of bodyguards and armoured cars.

"It was not a way to live. At some point we realized we had to leave
Colombia for a while. We wanted Colombians to forget a little bit about me."

She left her country unscathed, but there were few close calls along the
way. Some years ago, when her children were pre-schoolers, a random bullet
from a nearby gunfight zinged through her family's Bogota apartment. Three
years ago, her husband was carjacked, taken to a series of bank machines
where he was forced to withdraw all his money and sent home with nothing
more than cab fare. Last year, her daughter's boyfriend was stabbed in a
park near their home and spent a week in hospital recovering from a
punctured lung.

Ms. Kertzman was immediately enamoured of Canada for its rule of law and
the fact that she sees evidence of the country's tax dollars at work (she
still can't get over the free flu shot she received last fall).

She says she will never surrender the freedom to express her opinions,
whether that pits her against Amnesty International, average Canadians or
groups such as the Inter-Church Committee, a coalition of 20 Canadian
church groups.

"I am ready to fight. I am not afraid. I know that I am not in danger," she
says. "I don't have a right to have an opinion? Is that Christian, that I
get so much hate mail in my e-mail address from all these people?"