Bogota  - Colombian police arrested Wednesday Daniel Rendon, known with the alias "Don Mario," the boss of a paramilitary gang devoted to drug trafficking.

Cesar Mauricio Velasquez, press secretary at the government palace in Bogota, said that the man - one of the most sought after suspects in Colombia - was arrested in the town of Apartado, in the northwestern region of Antioquia.

Police said that the operation that led to the arrest started a month earlier, when 600 elite officers cornered "Don Mario" between Apartado and Necocli, a town in the Urabab region, on the Panamanian border.

Rendon was the leader of a group of some 1,000 paramilitaries known as the Autodefensas Gaitanistas, which was regarded as one of Colombia's main drug cartels.

Colombian authorities had offered a reward of some 2.1 million dollars for information leading to the arrest of "Don Mario," 43. The United States is seeking his extradition.

Police said last month that 11 gangs with a total of 2,500 armed men currently control the drug business in Colombia.

Rendon and a handful of others took over the business following the death, arrest or extradition to the United States of the more prominent bosses of the Medellin and Cali cartels, which dominated drug trafficking in the 1980s and 1990s, and of the North of the Valley Cartle, which the authorities think disappeared more recently.

Freddy Rendon, a brother of "Don Mario," was arrested a few months ago in the framework of negotiations between the government and the extreme-right paramilitaries, which led close to 32,000 people to lay down their weapons 2003-2006.(dpa)