ARRESTS, RAIDS MAKE DENT IN COCAIN-SMUGGLING CARTEL

Mexico And Colombia Forces With U.S.

Bogota, Colombia (AP) - A leader of the once-powerful Medellin cartel was
among 30 people arrested Wednesday and slated for extradition to the United
States in what authorities described as the biggest blow to Colombian drug
trafficking since 1995.

In a separate, unrelated operation, U.S. drug officials in Purerto Rico
announced the arrests of 1,290 lower-level trafficking suspects in 15
countries and the seizure of more than two dozen drug-running boats in a
two-week operation, mostly in the Caribbean.

Former Medellin cartel leader Fabio Ochoa, 42, was the best-known suspect
seized in Colombia in pre-dawn raids that officials said crippled the
heir-apparent to the Medellin and Cali cartels, Colombia's main drug mafias
throughout the 1980s and early 1990s.

The successor ring smuggled up to 30 tons of cocaine a month into Mexico for
distribution throughout the United States - using transit countries
including Ecuador and Chile - and also shipped the drugs to Europe,
according to Colombian and U.S. offcials.

New smuggling organizations have traditionally emerged to take over the
business of jailed drug bosses.

Nevertheless, Attorney General Janet Reno on Wednesday said she was
encouraged by the arrests.

"This operation is as if we removed the chief executive officers of three
major corporations who joined together in an illegal conspiracy," she said
in Washington.

The ring allegedly was organized by 40-year-old Alejandro Bernal Madrigal of
Bogota, who officials said pulled together remnants of the Medellin and
other drug gangs and personally established smuggling routes through Mexican
organizations.

One suspect was arrested in Mexico, but Armando Valencia, Bernal's chief
link in that country, was still at large, U.S. officials said.

Colombia's police director, Gen. Rosso Jose Serrano, told reporters in
Bogoata that his officers had worked "shoulder-to-shoulder" for more than a
year with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and CIA in the sting,
dubbed Operation Millennium.

Reno called it an "unprecedented collaborative effort" wiht Mexico and
Colombia, the world's leading exporter of cocaine, sending out abn estimated
500 tons a year.