ASSAULT ON U.S. AGENTS CHARGED

The United States asked Mexico on Thursday to arrest an accused cocaine
kingpin on charges of threatening to kill U.S. agents after his crewmen,
armed with submachine guns, surrounded the agents' car on a busy street in
Matamoros last year.

A federal grand jury indictment made public in Brownsville, Texas, charged
Osiel Cardenas-Guillen, 33, with assault on an FBI agent and a Drug
Enforcement Administration agent and with running an organization that
brought drugs across the Mexican border from Reynosa to McAllen, Texas.

Additional indictments returned in Illinois, Ohio, Tennessee and New York
accused the drug ring's members of transporting cocaine and marijuana --
hidden in tractor-trailers carrying produce -- and distributing the drugs
in 10 U.S. cities.

Authorities obtained arrest warrants for more than 100 suspects in the
United States. Mexican police were searching for seven others. And U.S.
authorities asked officials in the Dominican Republic to arrest a suspect
there.

The State Department is offering a $2 million reward for information
leading to the arrest and conviction of Cardenas-Guillen, who is still at
large. But more than half of those sought have been picked up. Over the
past year, 82 others were arrested, thousands of pounds of drugs were
seized, and more than $10 million in cash was confiscated.

The indictment of Cardenas-Guillen is the result of a year-long
investigation by the DEA, FBI, Internal Revenue Service and Customs
Service. The investigation focused on what was left of two groups of
Mexican drug traffickers that U.S. authorities have been targeting for
several years.

Law enforcement officials say that Cardenas-Guillen, known as ''The Friend
Killer'' because they say he has no qualms about killing people close to
him, rose to power during the confusion within those groups and became a
major trafficker in Matamoros.

The assault of the agents Nov. 9, 1999, wasn't the first time he is
believed to have threatened police. In June 1999, he allegedly threatened
to kill an undercover Cameron County, Texas, sheriff's investigator and his
family.

''It underscores the savagery we see increasingly on the part of
traffickers,'' Customs Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.

The incident with the agents occurred in midafternoon as they drove in
Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville. The agents noticed that they
were being followed and tried to lose their pursuers but were cut off by a
truck. Suddenly, several men armed with AK-47s burst from another vehicle
and surrounded the agents' car. DEA officials say that Cardenas-Guillen was
there, an AK-47 in his hands and a gold-plated .45-caliber handgun stuck in
the waistband of his pants.

Cardenas-Guillen and his underlings are accused of trying to pull the
agents out of their car through the doors and windows. He allegedly shouted
that he was going to kill them.

DEA Administrator Donnie Marshall said the agents warned Cardenas-Guillen
that if he killed them, the FBI and DEA would not rest until he was
captured. They reminded him that U.S. authorities spent six years pursuing
an Arizona DEA agent's killer. It was then, Marshall says, that he let them go.