MEXICAN ARMY ARRESTS MAJOR COCAINE SUSPECT

MEXICO CITY, May 27 -- Authorities today announced the arrest of a major
drug trafficker they said was responsible for moving at least a ton of
cocaine a month into the United States.

Mexican soldiers captured Jesus Albino Quintero Meraz, known as "Big Ears,"
early Sunday in the Caribbean port city of Veracruz. Quintero was arrested
with six other men, including a federal police officer accused of providing
protection to his operations since 1996.

The arrest is the latest in a string of blows that Mexican authorities have
dealt in recent months to this country's powerful drug cartels, including
the arrest in March of Benjamin Arellano Felix, leader of the violent
Tijuana cartel that bears his family name.

Officials said Quintero admitted smuggling as much as 1 1/2 tons of cocaine
a month into the United States, for a long time under the protection of
Mario Villanueva, then governor of Quintana Roo state.

The governor vanished just before his term ended in March 1999 and was a
fugitive until his arrest in May 2001. He is awaiting trial on drug
trafficking charges and the United States is seeking his extradition on
federal drug charges.

Quintero "was not as famous, did not have the glamour -- if we can call it
that -- of others, but he is and was very important in handling cocaine,"
said Defense Secretary Gerardo Vega Garcia, who announced the arrest with
Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha.

Vega and Macedo said Quintero had been a lieutenant of drug lord Amado
Carrillo Fuentes, who authorities say died after botched plastic surgery in
July 1997.

Quintero, who has been wanted since 1997, moved cocaine from Guatemala to
the southern Mexican states of Chiapas and Veracruz, where it was
transferred to planes that carried it to Tamaulipas state, where it was
smuggled over the border into Texas, authorities said.

Vega said Quintero was on the same level as traffickers such as Joaquin "El
Chapo" Guzman, who has been at large since he escaped from prison last year.