$5M BOUNTY ON DRUG DON

U.S. Authorities Have Offered Up To $5 Million For Information That
Helps Capture A Reputed Leader Of The Gulf Cartel. The Mexico-Based
Smuggling Operation Is One Of The World's Most Powerful Drug
Organizations

MEXICO CITY - The United States offered a reward of up to $5 million
for information leading to the capture of the man they say heads the
feared Gulf Cartel, believed to smuggle tons of cocaine and marijuana
north each year.

U.S. Ambassador Tony Garza, in a statement released late Thursday,
called Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sanchez ``the linchpin of a network of
drug dealers and murderers.''

Ambassador Garza said Costilla Sanchez is charged with 12 counts of
drug trafficking and money laundering. He is also wanted for
assaulting a police official.

''Residents of our border communities will be significantly safer if
he is apprehended and bought to justice,'' Garza said.

Known on the street as ''El Coss,'' Costilla Sanchez had been simply
referred to as a key Gulf Cartel boss before Thursday's statement
saying U.S. officials believe he now heads the drug organization based
in Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Texas.

Investigators say the Gulf Cartel, the Juarez Cartel and a gang of
smugglers and assassins headed by Mexico's most-wanted drug lord,
Joaquin ''El Chapo'' Guzman, are Mexico's main drug gangs.

Costilla Sanchez had been previously linked to the brutal killing of
newspaper columnist Francisco Arratia Saldierna, who was beaten to
death in Matamoros in August 2004. Arratia Saldierna's reports on drug
trafficking and organized crime might have prompted the attack.

The Gulf Cartel was thought to be headed by Osiel Cardenas until his
2003 capture following a shootout with police in Matamoros.

Mexican authorities believe Cardenas has continued to run much of his
drug gang's operations from prison and may have formed an alliance
with another jailed kingpin, Benjamin Arellano Felix.

Arellano Felix is accused of heading the Tijuana-based smuggling
syndicate that bears his family's name.

Both men are being held in the top-security La Palma prison west of
Mexico City.

But Thursday's announcement emphasized Costilla Sanchez's role as
chief of the cartel.

Garza said he is ``believed to be the leader of the Gulf Cartel, an
organization responsible for the distribution of thousands of
kilograms of cocaine and marijuana into Mexico and the United States
each year.''

''We offer a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to
his arrest,'' he said.

U.S. officials say that while Colombia remains the world's biggest
producer of cocaine, more than 90 percent of it enters the United
States through Mexico, and cartels based in this country are now the
most powerful in the world.

Investigators have blamed mounting violence along the U.S.-Mexico
border on a turf war between rival cartels over billion-dollar
smuggling routes into the United States.