MEXICO SEIZES REPUTED DRUG LORD

Arrest Is Latest Blow Against Traffickers by President Fox

MEXICO CITY, March 14 -- Mexican soldiers today arrested reputed drug lord
Osiel Cardenas Guillen after a shoot-out in the border city of Matamoros.
U.S. and Mexican officials said it was the most significant drug bust since
last year's arrest of alleged kingpin Benjamin Arellano Felix.

Cardenas was captured during a morning raid in which heavily armed soldiers
surrounded several homes in Matamoros, Defense Secretary Gerardo Vega Garcia
said at a news conference. Vega said three soldiers were wounded, two of
them critically, when Cardenas's associates opened fire with automatic
weapons. They also tossed a hand grenade at the soldiers, according to media
reports.

"This is one of the biggest hits ever," said one U.S. official familiar with
the investigation, adding that intelligence agents had learned that Cardenas
would be at that location today for a family party to celebrate the wedding
and birthday of his daughter.

Officials say Cardenas, 35, known as "El Loco," is the head of the Gulf
Cartel, which controls the flow of tons of marijuana, cocaine and heroin
from Mexico's eastern coast into the United States. Officials say Cardenas
took over the cartel in 1997, after former boss Juan Garcia Abrego was
sentenced to life in prison by a U.S. federal judge in Houston. The cartel
is said to be one of the three main drug-smuggling organizations in Mexico.
The others are based in Ciudad Juarez, just south of El Paso, Texas, and
Tijuana on the Pacific coast.

Cardenas, who was flown to Mexico City for questioning, will face charges of
murder, drug trafficking and firearms violations before Mexico considers
whether to extradite him to the United States, Attorney General Rafael
Macedo de la Concha said.

U.S. officials immediately filed papers seeking the extradition of Cardenas,
who faces federal drug-trafficking and money-laundering charges and is one
of U.S. law enforcement's most sought-after fugitives. He is also wanted in
connection with an incident in November 1999 in which he allegedly
threatened to kill agents from the FBI and the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration on a Matamoros street.

The arrest is the latest in a series of successes against drug traffickers
by President Vicente Fox, who personally ordered today's raid. Last year,
the government dealt two key blows to the Tijuana cartel: the March arrest
of Arellano Felix, the cartel's alleged boss, and the February shooting
death of his brother and cartel enforcer, Ramon Arellano Felix.

Authorities had been closing in on Cardenas for some time. In March 2002,
Mexican federal police arrested Adan Medrano Rodriguez, a top Cardenas
lieutenant. Then in May, they arrested Jesus Albino Quintero Meraz, a
Cardenas associate who boasted to his captors that he moved at least a ton
of cocaine a day into the United States.