MEXICO CITY, Mexico (Reuters) -- A former Mexican governor accused
                 of working with one of the country's leading cocaine cartels was arrested
                 by police Thursday after more than two years on the run.

                 Attorney General Rafael Macedo de la Concha said Mario Villanueva had been
                 arrested in the Caribbean resort town of Cancun and would be transferred to
                 a maximum-security prison outside Mexico City.

                 Villanueva is accused of having had close ties with the infamous Juarez
                 drug cartel and allowing it to land huge quantities of Colombian cocaine along
                 the Caribbean coastline of Mexico's southeastern state of Quintana Roo during
                 his term as governor.

                 Villanueva disappeared in March 1999, just days before his six-year term came
                 to an end and as federal agents prepared to arrest him.

                 Macedo said Villanueva offered no resistance as he was finally arrested in Cancun
                 on Thursday night, but he flatly rejected suggestions that the former governor might
                 be given special treatment.

                 "We will not negotiate the law under any circumstances. We will apply the law,"
                 Macedo told the Televisa news network, adding that Villanueva would face
                 charges of organized-crime activity and the promotion of drug trafficking.

                 Macedo, a former army general, said Mexican police worked closely with the
                 U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in tracking down Villanueva, who was
                 accompanied by a former state police officer and another friend when he was
                 captured.

                 Ex-governor belonged to PRI

                 Villanueva was a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which
                 ruled Mexico for 71 years before losing power in elections last July.

                 He said before his disappearance that he was the victim of a smear campaign led
                 by former colleagues in the administration of President Ernesto Zedillo, who left
                 office in December.

                 The new conservative government of President Vicente Fox has pledged to
                 clamp down on official corruption and tighten cooperation with U.S. authorities
                 in the war against drugs.

                 It has already begun a campaign against corruption but, before Villanueva's
                 arrest, had been criticized for failing to arrest any high-profile figures.

                 The Juarez cartel is based in the northern city of Ciudad Juarez, just across the
                 border from El Paso, Texas. It is one of Mexico's top drug gangs, bringing in
                 cocaine from South America and smuggling it into the United States.

                 Villanueva's mother said last July, when Fox won the presidential elections, that
                 her son would turn himself over to judicial authorities only after Zedillo left
                 office.

                 But Fox's government repeatedly said it would not cut any deal with the fugitive
                 former governor.

                 "We are not making any kind of a deal with Mr. Villanueva," National Security
                 Adviser Adolfo Aguilar Zinser said earlier this month. "If he turns himself in, he
                 will be subject to justice, applied to the letter."

                    Copyright 2001 Reuters.