CARACAS, Venezuela — A Salvadoran man wanted by Cuba in a series of bombings has been arrested with a false passport at the Caracas airport, according to President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela.

President Chávez said on Friday that the suspect, Francisco Chávez Abarca, was detained by Venezuelan intelligence agents as he arrived at the airport on Thursday. He is accused of placing bombs in Havana in 1997.

The president called Mr. Chávez a close associate of the Cuban militant Luis Posada Carriles, a former C.I.A. operative who is wanted in connection with the 1976 bombing of a Cuban plane that killed 73 people.

“I’m sure this man didn’t come here for tourism,” the president said. “He came here to place bombs, to see how to hunt an objective that has a price: my head.” President Chávez said the Cuban authorities believe that Mr. Chávez placed an explosive
that damaged a hotel disco on April 2, 1997, and one later that month that failed to explode on the 15th floor of the same hotel.

Cuba also suspects him in the bombing of a Cuban government tourist office in Mexico on May 24, 1997, the president said, and of recruiting others to bomb tourist sites in Cuba in 1997 and 1998.

The Venezuelan authorities plan to turn Mr. Chávez over to Interpol to be sent to Cuba, the president said.