AUTHORITIES DISMANTLE DRUG RING, OFFER REWARD

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. authorities arrested more than 50 people on
Thursday in dismantling a ring that smuggled cocaine and marijuana from
Mexico to the United States, and offered a $2 million reward for
information about three accused Mexican traffickers.

The State Department offered the reward for information leading to the
arrest or conviction of Osiel Cardenas-Guillen or his two top lieutenants,
Juan Manuel Garza Rendon and Adan Medrano, at a news conference at the U.S.
Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

The U.S. attorney in Brownsville, Texas, made public on Thursday an
indictment charging Cardenas-Guillen with conspiring to distribute drugs
and assault on federal agents.

Officials said the arrests took place early Thursday morning in a number of
cities, including Brownsville, McAllen and Houston, Texas; Chicago;
Columbus, Ohio; Memphis, Tennessee and New York.

Those arrested have been charged with running a wide-ranging conspiracy to
smuggle thousands of pounds of cocaine and marijuana from Mexico into Texas
for distribution throughout the country, officials said.

Called "Operation Impunity II," it was the third phase of an investigation
that began in August 1996.

The officials described Cardenas-Guillen as a leading figure in the drug
trade in Matamoros, Mexico. He is charged with assaulting an FBI (news -
web sites) and a DEA agent on Nov. 9, 1999, in Matamoros.

He is also charged with direct responsibility for an assault on June 9,
1999, in Brownsville on an investigator from the sheriff's office in
Cameron County, Texas, who was working undercover for the U.S. Customs Service.

"We are sending a clear and strong message that no one can threaten or harm
a federal agent with impunity," DEA Administrator Donnie Marshall said in a
statement.

The officials said the United States also presented provisional arrests
warrants for extradition of eight Mexicans in Mexico and one Dominican from
the Dominican Republic. Three of the eight Mexicans were accused of being
directly involved in the assaults of the federal agents in Mexico.