In his May 19 column on Luis Posada Carriles being detained, U.S. should deport Posada, seek Castro's terrorists, Andres Oppenheimer rightly notes that if the Bush administration fails to deport Posada, ``it will make a mockery of its war on terror.''

Oppenheimer then suggests that the United States can evade its treaty obligations to extradite Posada to Venezuela by deporting him to a third country, such as Italy, where Posada could be tried for the death of an Italian tourist in a bombing in Cuba for which Posada claimed responsibility.

However, under Article VII of the 1922 extradition treaty between the United States and Venezuela, in the event of extradition requests from multiple countries for the same person, the country that requested extradition first takes precedence. Since only Venezuela has requested extradition, under U.S. treaty obligations Posada must be handed over to that country.

DEBORAH JAMES, Global Exchange, San Francisco