President Hugo Chávez's government plans to reactivate its demand this week for the United States to extradite a former CIA operative accused of plotting the 1976 bombing of a Cuban plane, a lawyer for the Venezuelan government said yesterday.

Venezuela's Foreign Ministry is to renew the extradition request for Cuban militant Luis Posada Carriles before the Americas summit that starts tomorrow in Trinidad and Tobago, attorney Jose Pertierra told The Associated Press.

"I expect it'll happen before the summit," he said by phone from Washington.

Venezuelan authorities accuse Posada, a naturalised Venezuelan citizen, of masterminding the airliner bombing while living in Caracas, and want to try him on murder charges.

The 81-year-old Posada, a militant opponent of Cuba's Fidel Castro and formerly a high-ranking official in Venezuela's secret police, denies involvement in the Cuban airliner bombing, which killed 73 people off the coast of Barbados