Last updated at 22:17 11 September 2007

One of the world's most wanted drug lords has been captured hiding in bushes in his underwear.

Colombian authorities are calling the arrest of Diego Montoya, nicknamed The Lord of War, as their biggest drug war victory since the 1993 slaying of Medellin cartel leader Pablo Escobar.

Montoya, who sits with Osama bin Laden on the FBI's 10 most-wanted list, allegedly leads the Norte del Valle cartel, Colombia's most powerful and dangerous trafficking organization.

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Defence Minister Juan Manuel Santos, in a press conference at Bogota's airport, said Montoya was responsible for 1,500 killings in his career.

The FBI had offered US$5 million (£2.5m) for information leading to the arrest of Montoya, who put up no resistance when the army finally tracked him down in the cartel's stronghold of Valle del Cauca state in western Colombia.

"Drug traffickers take note: this is the future that awaits you," Santos said before the heavy-set Montoya limped out of an air force plane wearing plastic handcuffs and escorted by five Colombian commandos.

Montoya was to be questioned in Bogota before being extradited to the United States, a procedure Santos said would take at most two months.

The operation to capture the 49-year-old Montoya took months of preparation and got the green light before dawn Monday, when commandos raided a farm and caught him with his mother, an uncle and three other cartel members.

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Authorities had been closing in on the cartel since last year, when soldiers killed eight members of a private militia believed to be protecting Montoya, but a wide network of cartel informants had frustrated the search for the alleged drug boss himself. Another complication has been the cartel's alleged infiltration of Colombia's army and navy.

"Colombia's capture of cocaine kingpin Diego Montoya shows what can be accomplished by a government that is relentless, focused, and skilled in the effort to dismantle threats to its democracy," said White House "Drug Czar" John P. Walters.

A U.S. indictment unsealed in 2004 against Montoya and Varela said that over the previous 14 years their cartel had exported more than 1.2 million pounds - 600 tons - of cocaine worth more than US$10 billion from Colombia to Mexico and ultimately to the United States for resale.

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Colombia is the source of 90 percent of the cocaine entering the United States. Supplies have remained robust despite record extraditions and coca eradication, and despite "Don Diego's" capture, history suggests it won't be long before someone takes his place.