MAJOR HEROIN RING BUSTED, COLOMBIA SAYS

BOGOTA, Colombia - Anti-narcotics police dismantled a major heroin
smuggling ring Wednesday in a predawn sweep that spanned four cities
and led to the capture of 46 alleged drug traffickers, law enforcement
authorities said.

The raid netted Nicolas Urquijo Gaviria, the suspected leader of the
ring and a cousin of the late drug lord Pablo Escobar, police said.
Authorities said that Urquijo's ring exported up to 110 pounds of
heroin a month and had established routes to the United States, Spain,
the Netherlands and Italy.

Well known as the major source of the world's cocaine, Colombia has
expanded into the heroin market in recent years, according to law
enforcement authorities. In total, police estimate that Colombian drug
cartels export about 6 tons of heroin a year.

"These arrests practically remove the backbone from what I consider
the most important heroin trafficking organization in our country,"
National Police Commander Rosso Jose Serrano said at a news conference
in Cali after the arrests.

No extradition requests are anticipated for those arrested Wednesday,
a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration spokeswoman said by telephone
from Washington. Nevertheless, the 3 a.m. sweep was a dramatic show of
Colombian commitment to cooperate in the war against drugs.

It coincides with President Andres Pastrana's meeting in Washington
with U.S. lawmakers to rally support for a huge aid package to help
Colombia fight an increasingly sophisticated narcotics trade. The aid
proposal has been stalled in the U.S. Senate.

The suspects, whom police lined up before reporters, included several
women. Urquijo kept his head bowed and turned his back to reporters
who tried to question him.

Stressing the grand scale of the sweep, Serrano said 60 prosecutors
participated in the yearlong investigation that led to the raids,
while a team of 1,300 police officers carried them out. Arrests were
made in the western cities of Cali, Popayan and Medellin and in Cucuta
near the Venezuelan border.

Serrano called the crackdown "Operation Millennium II," a reference to
the October 1999 arrests of 30 alleged traffickers, including
convicted former cartel boss Fabio Ochoa, for extradition to the
United States.

U.S. counter-narcotics agents also lent support to Wednesday's
operation, a police spokesman said, a fact underscored by the presence
at the news conference of the DEA attache in Colombia, Leo Arreguin.

The raid, Serrano said, snared people allegedly responsible for all
aspects of heroin production and export, from buyers of precursor
chemicals used to refine the drug to people charged with recruiting
"mules"--travelers paid to carry small quantities of drugs to
distributors in other countries.

Commonly, the mules swallow compact capsules of drugs covered in
latex, but customs officials also have found drugs packed into special
compartments in women's bras, in backpacks and even in a wig.

Large-scale narcotics organizations such as the one police said they
destroyed Wednesday are increasingly rare in Colombia. Since police
killed Escobar in a 1993 shootout and then dismantled the rival Cali
cartel, investigators say, drug operations have been taken over by a
broad network of smaller traffickers who maintain a low profile,
making them difficult to catch.