By MARK STEVENSON
Associated Press Writer

HAVANA -- (AP) -- Fidel Castro plans to travel to the United States for the first time since 1995 to attend next week's U.N. Millennium Summit, Cuban officials announced today.

Cuba has requested visas for Castro and other top officials and has already discussed preliminary security arrangements with the U.S. Secret Service and the New York Police Department, the Foreign Ministry said in press statement.

The Millennium Summit, which begins Wednesday, will bring together more than 150 world leaders.

``This morning, the United States government has been informed that companero Fidel will lead the Cuban (U.N.) delegation,'' the Cuban statement said.

``Now everything depends on the attitude that the U.S. government assumes, if it decides to repeat or not the situation with Alarcon,'' the statement said. It was referring to a decision last week to deny a U.S. visa to Ricardo Alarcon, the leader of Cuba's National Assembly.

Cuban officials are normally granted visas to travel to New York for U.N. meetings. It was at the 50th anniversary of the United Nations in 1995 that Castro last spoke i.

The Cuban statement revealed few details about the trip, but Castro would likely arrive at least a day before the Sept. 6-8 meeting of chiefs of state.

Castro would arrive aboard a Soviet-made Ilyushin Il-62 commercial jet operated by the state-run Cubana de Aviacion airline. Other members of his delegation would come on another of the four-engine planes.

On Thursday, Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque, who would also accompany Castro, told a news conference in Havana that Cuba is not worried about the possibility of violence against Castro in New York.

``No threat or risk is capable of scaring anybody in this country,'' he said. ``We have been in combat for 40 years to defend this revolution.''

Perez Roque said Cuba's representative -- now confirmed as Castro himself -- would be likely to speak at U.N. sessions on the afternoon of Sept. 6 and the morning of Sept. 7.

The importance that Castro's government attaches to the U.N. summit has been made clear in a series of television programs broadcast over Cuba's state-run television networks in recent months. The programs have focused on what Cuba claims is excessive U.S. power over the world body.

Tensions between Cuba and the United States rose this week after the State Department accused the island nation of preventing some Cubans with U.S. visas from emigrating. Cuba, in turn, accused the United States of failing to provide enough visas for poorer or less-educs.