Venezuela Seeks Return of 'terrorist'

Venezuela is to formally seek the extradition from the US of Luis Posada, who is wanted for trial in connection with the bombing of a Cuban airliner nearly 30 years ago. It is a request which will present the Bush administration with a diplomatic dilemma.

Five US politicians have been in Venezuela this week for talks with the justice minister over the increasingly sensitive issue of the 77-year-old Cuban exile.

Mr Posada, a former CIA operative and naturalised Venezuelan, escaped from prison in Caracas in 1985, where he was being held pending appeals after twice being acquitted for involvement in the 1976 bombing that killed 73 people.

He emerged in Miami last month protesting innocence and was detained by US immigration services after holding a press conference.

His immigration case over whether or not he entered the country illegally across the Mexican border is due to be heard on June 13.

The already frosty relations between the US and Venezuela's leftwing president, Hugo Chávez, have chilled further as a result of the episode. Mr Chávez has called Mr Posada "the number one terrorist in this world of the Americas", and accused the Bush government of protecting him.

The tension between the two countries was heightened by the news that President George Bush had met María Corina Machado, the director of the group Súmate, which the Venezuelan government accuses of being part of a destabilisation initiative. The group helped to organise the unsuccessful recall vote against President Chávez last year and has received funding from the conservative National Endowment for Democracy, which is funded through the US state department.

The five American politicians - three Republican representatives and two Democrats - had talks with Jesse Chacón, the justice and interior minister. Afterwards Mr Chacón described Mr Posada as "a fugitive from justice", and said a formal extradition request was being drawn up.

Declassified CIA and FBI documents now published indicate that Mr Posada was an active CIA operative linked to a variety of plots against the Cuban president, Fidel Castro.

Last month the state department rejected Venezuela's initial demand that Mr Posada be arrested, on the grounds that the evidence submitted was inadequate. The Venezuelan authorities are understood to be presenting more detailed grounds for extradition, and seeking to provide guarantees that he would get a fair trial if he were returned to Caracas. The US does not deport people to Cuba.

In Cuba the Posada affair has prompted an international conference, Against Terrorism, for Truth and Justice, beginning today in Havana.

During the past two week, Mr Castro has repeatedly accused the US of hypocrisy in its "war on terror" by not handing over Mr Posada, who enjoys the support of the Cuban exile community in Florida. Demonstrations demanding his extradition have been held in Havana.

If he were extradited to Venezuela it would provoke furious protests in Florida, a state which was crucial to Mr Bush's re-election, but a refusal to send him for trial would lay the White House open to charges of double standards on terrorism.

In a statement about the conference, the Cuban authorities claimed that "only after Cuba's repeated denunciation of this blatant double-standard ... did [US] immigration and customs federal services simulate an arrest which only extends this farce.

"As a result of this, the western hemisphere's worst terrorist has been minimally accused of illegal entry into US territory."