Colombia's police chief confirmed Friday that Luis H. Gomez Bustamante, one of the most important drug lords of the country's Norte del Valle Cartel, has been captured in Cuba.

"We have information from the Cuban authorities that this man returned on July 2 to the island holding a Venezuelan passport and he is arrested in Cuba for using a forged document," said Directo rof the National Police of Colombia, General Jorge Daniel Castro.

He indicated that at present their contacts with the Colombian embassy in Cuba are underway to see how the drug lord will be brought back to Colombia.

The Norte del Valle cartel supplanted the cartels of the Cali and Medellin in the early 1990s and is the source of up to 60 percent of the US cocaine supply, according to the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

In May 2003, the DEA accused nine members of this cartel for shipping 10 billion US dollars' worth of cocaine to the United States over the past years.

Colombia is the world's top cocaine and heroin producer, with an annual output of 580 tons of heroin. It supplies about 80 percent of the world's cocaine market, most of which ends up in the United States and Europe.

(Xinhua News Agency July 10, 2004)