Port of Spain  - The secretary general of the Organization of American States (OAS) said Friday he planned to seek the reinstatement of Cuba, which was suspended in 1962.

"My first approach is that we repeal the resolution of 1962, and I am going to ask the OAS General Assembly to do that," Jose Miguel Insulza said. The assembly is to meet in June in Honduras.

Insulza was speaking ahead of the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago, which is being attended by representatives of every country in the hemisphere except Cuba.

"I have always said that the first thing we have to do at the OAS before even speaking to Cuba on the matter is to repeal the resolution of 1962, which suspended Cuba. And then we talk," he said.

In an article published this week by Cuban Communist Party daily Granma, Cuban leader Fidel Castro said his country would not return to the OAS.

"(Insulza) knows that we do not even want to hear the name of that institution. It has not done our people a single service, it is the embodiment of treason. If one adds all the aggressive actions that it was an accomplice to, they amount to hundreds of thousands of lives and to scores of bloody years," Castro wrote.

On Thursday, Cuban President Raul Castro said in the eastern Venezuelan town of Cumana that OAS should "disappear."

Insulza did not attach great importance to these comments but stressed that the OAS has its place in hemispheric diplomacy.

"Of course, if a country has been suspended from the organization for almost 50 years, I would probably be very annoyed too," he said.  (dpa)