BY CASEY WOODS AND ALFONSO CHARDY

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez -- hoping that the Obama administration will be more receptive -- is planning to press a request for the extradition of Luis Posada Carriles so the militant Cuban exile can be re-tried for the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people.

Foreign Minister Nicolás Maduro is preparing a document in a bid to awaken interest in Washington for the extradition request filed soon after Posada sneaked into the United States in 2005, said José Pertierra, an attorney who represents the Venezuelan government in the U.S. capital.

''The foreign minister in Venezuela is preparing something that we'll be submitting soon to the State Department,'' Pertierra told The Miami Herald Thursday evening. ``Our request is still pending. We are going to be ratifying it and asking the Obama administration to follow up on the case.''

NO SURPRISE

Renewed Venezuelan pressure for Posada's extradition is not a surprise: The change of administrations offers Caracas a new opportunity to press its case.

The Bush administration, which had tense relations with Chávez's anti-American government, never acted on the Venezuelan extradition request.

''We think the Bush administration had a certain political debt . . . to the extreme right-wing element in Miami and therefore was also reticent to send back Posada Carriles,'' Pertierra said in a telephone interview. ``The Obama administration has no debt to the right-wing element in Miami.''

Posada's Miami attorney, Art Hernandez, said he expects to prevail in any federal court extradition proceedings because of a standing federal prohibition against removing Posada to Venezuela.

An immigration judge in 2005 ordered Posada deported from the United States, but prohibited federal authorities from sending him to Venezuela or Cuba. Hernandez said the immigration court ruling would deter any federal court from attempting to extradite Posada to Caracas.

FEAR OF TORTURE

The basis for the prohibition was fear that Posada would be tortured in Venezuela or Cuba. Born in Cuba, Posada became a naturalized Venezuelan when he worked in Caracas as a senior government intelligence officer.

''The status of the case remains the same,'' Hernandez said.

``There is a removal order for Posada, except to Venezuela or Cuba, and no measurable change in the quality or nature of the Venezuelan government has occurred that would warrant any change in the posture in the situation of removability or extradition.''

But Pertierra said change in Washington had stirred Caracas to try again and ask the Obama administration to undertake a ''fresh examination'' of the extradition request.

Posada, who turns 81 Feb. 15, had left his job in the Venezuelan intelligence agency known as DISIP when a bomb destroyed a Cubana de Aviación jetliner off Barbados in 1976, killing 73 passengers and crew members.

ACQUITTED

Posada was one of four key suspects arrested in the case. Vehemently denying the charges against him, Posada was tried in a military court and acquitted with the other suspects in 1980. Posada then escaped from prison while awaiting a new trial in a civilian court.

After figuring in the Iran-contra scandal in the mid-1980s, Posada settled in El Salvador and was implicated in the bombing of tourist sites in Cuba in the 1990s.

He has denied those accusations.

Posada was in immigration proceedings for illegally entering the United States. In 2007, Posada was charged criminally for the first time in the United States when a federal grand jury in Texas accused him of lying about how he sneaked into the country.

A federal judge threw out the indictment, but an appeals court reinstated it last year. Hernandez said he was preparing a request for the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the reinstatement.