PANAMA CITY, Panama — As Latin American and European leaders met to discuss their problems, Panamanian police on Saturday were trying to decide what to do with a shadowy former CIA agent accused of trying to kill Fidel Castro.
Luis Posada Carriles was detained Friday evening a few hours after the Cuban leader accused him of plotting an assassination during the two-day Ibero-American Summit, which was to conclude Saturday.
Police Chief Carlos Bares said police had 24 hours to charge or release Posada, who escaped from a Venezuelan prison in 1985 while awaiting retrial on charges of masterminding the bombing of a Cuban jetliner in 1976 that killed 73 people.
Bares said no weapons were found with Posada or three other people detained with him at a Panama City hotel. He said Posada had been using a Salvadoran passport in the name of Franco Rodriguez Mena. He did not identify the others detained.
"The situation of these people is the same. They are being investigated," Bares said Saturday.
Castro claimed Posada was working for the Miami-based Cuban-American National Foundation, which immediately denied any connection with Posada.
Castro's dramatic announcement and the subsequent detention of Posada overshadowed the summit of 19 Latin American leaders, along with those of Spain and Portugal.
As the summit neared a close, the presidents vowed to devote more resources to the problems of children in Latin America. Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez suggested that international lenders should grant partial debt relief to poor countries in exchange for investments in schools, hospitals or other social projects.
He warned that desperation over continuing poverty "is going to destabilize the world."
For decades, Cuba has accused Posada of terrorist acts against the communist island nation and assassination attempts against Castro himself.
Born in 1928, according to Cuban sources, Posada fled Cuba after the 1959 revolution led by Castro and was involved in U.S.-backed efforts to topple the communist government.
After working at least briefly for the CIA, Posada went to Venezuela where he rose to become director of operations for the country's intelligence agency, which was monitoring leftist rebels. He lost the job after a change in the presidency in 1974.
Prosecutors accused him of masterminding the October 1976 bombing of a Cubana de Aviacion jetliner. He was acquitted twice, but officials were making a third try to convict him when he escaped from prison in 1985. Venezuelan officials say he still faces charges there.
After Posada's escape, he allegedly helped send guns to the U.S.-backed Contra rebels in Nicaragua. Honduran officials also have identified him as the associate of an alleged arms dealer in that country.
The Miami Herald reported in 1998 that he had been living off and on in El Salvador and had close ties with current or retired military figures in the region.
Salvadoran officials said in 1998 they were unable to locate him.
In a 1998 interview with The New York Times, Posada was quoted as admitting involvement in the bombing of hotels in Cuba in 1997. A Salvadoran man who planted one of the bombs, Raul Ernesto Cruz Leon, was sentenced to death for killing an Italian tourist.
The Herald reported that Posada had been involved in several other attempts to disrupt Cuba's socialist economy or kill Castro at other international summits.
Police in the Dominican Republic intensified security for a Caribbean summit in August 1998 after the Herald reported that the FBI had received a warning that Posada planned to have Castro assassinated at the event.