BY CHARLES FORELLE

 The man who allegedly helped fugitive Peruvian spy chief Vladimiro Montesinos flee the country was arrested on a Peruvian warrant Friday morning with an associate at a rented Miami Beach apartment the two shared, the FBI said.

 Manuel Aybar Marca, a former Peruvian police colonel, and Liliana Pizarro de la Cruz, owner of a private security firm in Peru, are charged with money laundering, public corruption and illicit enrichment.

 THREE ARRESTS

 Their arrests bring to three the number of Montesinos' associates who have been arrested in South Florida.

 Aybar, 48, was Montesinos' security chief and the man Peruvian police say plotted his flight from Peru in October. Montesinos, President Alberto Fujimori's right-hand man during his 10-year period in office, was reportedly last seen in Venezuela and is presumed to have had plastic surgery to alter his appearance. Pizarro, 36, allegedly supplied Montesinos with a fake passport, the FBI said. Aybar and Pizarro are being held at the Federal Detention Center in Miami awaiting a court appearance Monday. They face extradition to Peru, Deputy U.S. Marshal John Amat said.

 RELATED ARRESTS

 Several of Montesinos' associates have been captured by authorities up and down the Americas this year.

 In January, Victor Alberto Venero Garrido, a Peruvian arms dealer who allegedly embezzled from a government pension fund, was picked up at a Miami Citibank. He was extradited to Peru and testified that he paid Montesinos millions in kickbacks.

 Police in Argentina arrested Ilan Weil Levy, one of Montesinos' partners, on corruption charges May 23. And two days before, police in Panama arrested José Lizier, who owned the yacht in which Montesinos escaped, for using a fake passport.

 "The people who surrounded Montesinos -- who at one point seemed unlocatable -- are falling down, one after the other,'' Interior Minister Antonio Vidal told reporters in Lima. "Aybar's capture has enormous importance. The ring around Montesinos is tightening inexorably, and he will fall in the hands of the justice authorities.''

 Aybar has been indicted by the 28th Criminal Court in Lima for corrupting officials and receiving money from defendants in drug trafficking cases, the Lima daily El
 Comercio reported.

 Herald translator Renato Pérez and wire services contributed to this report.

                                   © 2001