ARREST HAILED AS STEP TO ENDING TIJUANA CARTEL

SAN DIEGO -- Mexican authorities Thursday announced the arrest of a man
described as a senior figure in the Tijuana-based Arellano-Felix drug gang.

Authorities in Mexico City said Ismael Higuera Guerrero was arrested
Wednesday, along with his 15-year-old son and eight other people, after
Mexican soldiers and federal police raided a home along the scenic highway
near Ensenada, about 65 miles south of the U.S.-Mexico border.

About 30 soldiers and federal police officers, acting on an anonymous
telephone tip about an armed group firing weapons and creating a
disturbance, initially encountered gunfire from the rooftop, said Mariano
Herran Salvatti, Mexico's top drug prosecutor. After the officers entered
the ground floor and unleashed tear gas, Higuera and the others surrendered
without incident.

Mexican authorities say Higuera ran vast cross-border trafficking
operations and directed the torture and slaying of rivals that serve as the
drug group's bloody hallmark.

Herran labeled the arrest of Higuera, who was transferred overnight to
Mexico City, as a ``very important blow.''

The prosecutor also predicted the eventual capture of the three fugitive
Arellano-Felix brothers who sit atop the crime syndicate, perhaps the most
potent and vicious of Mexico's drug gangs.

``We are seeing the dismantling of the Arellano brothers' organization,''
Herran told reporters in Mexico City.

Higuera faces a homicide charge stemming from the 1994 death of a federal
police commander at the hands of state police officers allegedly acting
under orders from Higuera. He also is charged with drug trafficking.

The arrest prompted U.S. officials late Thursday to unseal an indictment in
U.S. District Court in San Diego charging Higuera with operating a
continuing criminal enterprise and conspiring to smuggle and distribute
cocaine.

U.S. authorities hailed the arrest as a significant advance in Mexico's
on-again, off-again campaign against the Arellano clan.

The cartel, with tentacles reaching along Mexico's Pacific coast and as far
south as Chiapas, controls a crucial corridor for smuggling marijuana,
cocaine and, increasingly, methamphetamines across the U.S. border.

About 60 percent of cocaine entering the United States comes across the
southern border, according to DEA estimates.

``The arrest of Ismael Higuera Guerrero on Mexican drug-trafficking charges
represents a major victory for both Mexican and U.S. law enforcement,''
Donnie R. Marshall, acting administrator of the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration, said in a statement.

U.S. authorities said Higuera supervised daily operations as the key link
to Colombian cocaine suppliers and marijuana growers in Mexico, arranging
payoffs to corrupt political and law-enforcement officials and wielding an
iron fist against rival traffickers from outside and traitors inside the
Arellano drug network.

Higuera rose in power as three Arellano brothers went underground after the
slaying in 1993 of Catholic Cardinal Jesus Posadas Ocampo in Guadalajara,
U.S. officials say.

The cardinal is thought to have been caught in a cross-fire during a
botched attempt by Arellano hit men to kill a rival drug lord.

Higuera is suspected of ordering the 1994 assassination of reformist
Tijuana Police Chief Federico Ben(acu)tez. That killing followed a
much-publicized shootout in downtown Tijuana between federal agents and
state police who were allegedly protecting Higuera. The showdown claimed
the lives of the federal commander and three other people.