2 MEN ARRESTED AS POLICE SEIZE ONE MILLION ECSTASY TABLETS

Narcotics detectives raided a studio apartment on the edge of the financial
district on Tuesday night and discovered more than a million tablets of the
popular club drug Ecstasy, the authorities said yesterday.

Two men were arrested after the seizure, which Police Commissioner Bernard
B. Kerik said was the largest ever in New York City. Mr. Kerik, Mayor
Rudolph W. Giuliani and Richard A. Brown, the Queens district attorney,
held a news conference to announce the seizure. The police also confiscated
$187,000 in cash.

Mr. Brown said the two men, David Roash, 28, and Israel Ashkenazi, 25, both
Israeli citizens, were charged with several drug offenses. If convicted
they could be sentenced to eight and a third years to life in prison.

Mr. Kerik said detectives from the Queens narcotics unit who were
investigating Ecstasy dealing had identified the men as major wholesale
drug dealers and learned that they had entered the United States on May 22.
Their lease for the studio apartment where the drugs were seized took
effect June 1, he said. The detectives obtained a search warrant for the
apartment, which is at 1 West Street and overlooks Battery Park. They
searched it about 10 p.m. Tuesday, Mr. Kerik said. They found the pink,
white and light blue pills packed into eight duffle bags and a suitcase.

"There are a million less Ecstasy pills in the city that won't get to our
kids, to the clubs and schoolyards," Mr. Kerik said.

At the news conference at 1 Police Plaza, where the tablets were displayed
across a table, Mr. Giuliani said, "When you look at these pills, they look
harmless, but they are very, very dangerous substances that can in fact be
fatal under some circumstances."

The drug sells in nightclubs and on the street for $20 to $40 a tablet.
Because the police were still counting the pills and said the number could
rise well above one million, they estimated the value of the drugs at $40
million.