COLOMBIA AND U.S. POLICE SAY HEROIN RING BROKEN

BOGOTA -- U.S. and Colombian officials have smashed a heroin smuggling
ring and made 40 arrests following an investigation that began with
the arrest in Miami of the son of a top Colombian anti-drug official,
police said on Friday.

Police said they suspect the ring has shipped one ton of heroin with a
street value of $800 million into the United States over the last
seven months.

In a coordinated action dubbed ``Operation Residents,'' Colombian and
U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents arrested 24 suspects in
Colombia and 16 in U.S. cities, including New York City and Miami,
ending a six-month-old investigation.

Some of the arrests were made late on Thursday, and others in the past
few weeks.

A police spokeswoman said the probe began after Andres
Lafaurie-Restrepo was arrested last November at Miami airport on
charges of smuggling more than 15 pounds of heroin into the United
States.

Lavalieres is the son of Maria Ins Restore, director of Colombia's
state-run National Alternative Development Program, which seeks to
wean poor farmers off illegal drug crops in the Andean nation.

The official's son, who was 19 at the time, was arrested along with a
friend as they allegedly carried 15.2 pounds of heroin taped to their
legs under baggy trousers.

Colombia, gripped by a 37-year-old war fueled by the drug trade, is
the world's No. 1 cocaine producer, shipping some 580 tons of the
illegal white powder every year, mostly to the United States. The
South American nation is also a leading provider of the heroin
consumed on U.S. streets.

The spokeswoman said the ring used ``upper-class Colombians'' --
including some with residency permits in the United States -- as drug
couriers, known as ``mules.''

The United States, the world's top consumer of drugs, is providing $1
billion in mostly military aid to wipe out vast coca plantations in
Colombia's rebel-controlled southern jungles.

The aid, which critics say smacks of U.S imperialism, includes the
delivery of 16 U.S. Black Hawk helicopters and the training by elite
U.S. Green Berets of three Colombian anti-narcotics brigades.

As part of increasing joint operations between the two countries,
Colombian and U.S. officials last January broke a major
heroin-smuggling ring that allegedly smuggled 20 to 45 pounds of
ultra-pure heroin each week into the United States.

Sixty-eight suspects -- 38 in the United States and 30 in Colombia --
were arrested in that operation.