U.S. CHARGES FORMER MEXICAN GOVERNOR AS COCAINE SMUGGLER

Narcotics: Indictment Accuses Villanueva, Who Was Arrested In Cancun After
2 Years On The Run, Of Taking Payoffs For Drug Shipments To North.

MEXICO CITY--U.S. prosecutors Friday unsealed an indictment accusing a
former Mexican governor of cocaine smuggling on the same day he was
jailed here after two years on the run.

The joint moves were an unusual display of emerging U.S.-Mexican
cooperation against drug traffickers.

Mario Villanueva, at the time governor of Quintana Roo state, vanished
in 1999 days before he was to leave office and just when Mexican
authorities were about to charge him with trafficking. Federal police
Thursday night arrested Villanueva, disguised with a goatee and a
ponytail, in the resort city of Cancun.

Hours later, the U.S. indictment was unsealed in Manhattan, unveiling
detailed charges against Villanueva--including accusations that he was
paid $500,000 for each of numerous shipments of cocaine to the United
States between 1994 and 1998 while he was governor. In all, the
indictment charges, he conspired to bring 200 tons of cocaine across
the border.

The first and so far the only Mexican governor charged with drug
trafficking, he is also the highest-ranking former Mexican government
official indicted by the United States. He has repeatedly denied that
he is guilty, saying the charges are politically motivated, but
investigators accuse him of turning his state on the Yucatan peninsula
into a major shipping route for Colombian cocaine.

U.S. and Mexican officials alike called the two-pronged action against
Villanueva a breakthrough in cooperation after years of deep U.S.
doubts about the integrity of Mexican law enforcement. When he took
office in December, Mexican President Vicente Fox promised to attack
corruption in the justice system that had thwarted previous probes.

"We had outstanding cooperation from the Fox administration," said
Felix Jimenez, U.S. special agent in charge of the New York office of
the Drug Enforcement Administration. Asked in a phone interview to
compare the past joint efforts with this one, Jimenez said: "Night and
day."

Fox told reporters that the arrest demonstrated "our great effort, on
all fronts . . . to end impunity in the country." He said that while
the Villanueva case was important, it was just one of about 1,000
arrests being carried out each month on criminal charges compared with
80 a month in the last administration.

Villanueva was taken into custody with his driver and a former junior
official of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which lost
the presidency to Fox after 71 years in power. The PRI's national
president, Dulce Maria Sauri, said in Mexico City that the arrest came
just days before Sunday's gubernatorial race in the adjacent state of
Yucatan. She questioned whether the timing was meant to damage the PRI
on the eve of a close battle with Fox's National Action Party.

Sauri noted that it was the former PRI government of President Ernesto
Zedillo that in 1999 brought the first charges against Villanueva. She
said that Villanueva had "separated himself" from the party when the
charges were brought against him and that he is no longer a member.

Luis Astorga, who studies drug trafficking at the Institute for Social
Research at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, said some
parts of Mexico's political class had built up a web of involvement in
drug trafficking during the PRI's rule. He said the Fox administration
has the advantage of being free of that legacy. "Taking advantage of
this, Fox can and should sever the historic link of the political
class with drug trafficking."

Wearing a bulletproof vest, Villanueva was flown from Cancun to Mexico
City before dawn Friday and then driven in a convoy of army and police
vans to a maximum-security prison outside the capital.

Mexican Atty. Gen. Rafael Macedo de la Concha told a television
interviewer that the arrest "has resulted in part from intense work
and interchange of information with different international agencies,
specifically in this case with the DEA, and we have followed a very
intense pursuit in the last few months."

Macedo said any extradition request would go through normal judicial
channels. Mexico and the U.S. signed a protocol last week under which
suspects, after being prosecuted in one country, can be extradited
temporarily to the other for trial to ensure that the investigative
trail doesn't grow cold.

Astorga noted that if Mexico complies with a U.S. request for
Villanueva's extradition, "this would mark a qualitative difference in
the U.S.-Mexican relationship and the cooperation between the various
agencies in combating drugs."

The Mexican charges against Villanueva include 28 counts of
trafficking, money laundering and taking part in organized crime. The
case was built up starting in 1997, with testimony from witnesses who
accused Villanueva of protecting a major Mexican cartel as it expanded
operations in Quintana Roo. Villanueva was said to have worked with
Ramon "El Metro" Alcides Magana, the purported boss in southeastern
Mexico for the Juarez cartel.

The U.S. allegations take the accusations much further.

The indictment, according to a Justice Department summary, says
Villanueva took part in a conspiracy to import about 200 tons of
cocaine into the U.S. while he was governor. Two such shipments,
totaling about 3,800 pounds, were seized in the Bronx and in
Middletown, N.Y., in February and March 1997.

One shipment in 1995 was loaded onto an airplane owned by the
governor's office, the indictment adds.