Americas News
Panama solves stalemate; US, Venezuela trade barbs (Roundup)
By JT Nguyen
Nov 2, 2006, 19:00 GMT

New York - After a compromise on Panama ended the second longest election in UN history, the United States and Venezuela Thursday traded barbs over their face-off in the General Assembly.

Venezuela and the US-backed Guatemala agreed late Wednesday to end a two-week stalemate in the UN General Assembly over who should fill the vacant seat assigned to Latin America on the UN Security Council.

Although Guatemala led in 47 rounds of voting, it failed to attain the necessary two-thirds majority to win the seat over Venezuela.

Under pressure from the Latin American and Caribbean group, and with the assembly losing patience, the two countries agreed to step aside for Panama as a consensus candidate. The General Assembly has set aside next Tuesday for the final vote.

'For Panama and the equilibrium that it has represented in different international forums, this is an opportunity to continue promoting peace and justice in the world,' said Panama's Foreign Minister Samuel Lewis Navarro in an interview from New York with local television in Panama.

But the move has not restored equilibrium to the bitter dispute between Caracas and Washington, with each claiming victory Thursday and condemning the actions of the other.

The dispute reached an apex in September when Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called US President George W Bush a 'devil' who had left behind the smell of 'sulfur' in a speech to the General Assembly. Some UN members said Chavez's invective cost him the seat.

At the United Nations, US Ambassador John Bolton said the 'defeat of Venezuela certainly accomplished our principal target.'

'The Venezuelans defeated themselves through a variety of tactics and I have said repeatedly we don't get involved in regional group decisions,' said US Ambassador John Bolton. 'We become involved because of the threats that we thought that Venezuelan obstructionalism imposes on the operations of the Security Council.'

Chavez said he intended to use the council seat to give him the power to reform the world organization and get rid of US influence over world affairs. The 15-member council includes five veto-wielding permanent members - the US, Russia, France, Britain and China.

Bolton said that Chavez's 'unconscionable speech to the General Assembly' indicated how the country would have behaved in the Security Council, and led an 'overhelming majority' of the 192-member aassembly away from supporting Chavez.

Although Chavez had claimed support from the 132-nation Non- aligned Movement and the Latin American and Caribbean group, his country never got more than 85 votes while Guatemala consistently took 105 votes or more.

Venezeula tried to put the best face on the compromise, saying it represented a victory over the United States and taught an important lesson to Washington and its 'hegemonic' imperial designs for Latin America and the planet.

The US could 'not finish its work. It could not do it - to get its candidate in and take us out of the fight,' Venezuela's ambassador to the UN, Francisco Arias Cardenas, told Union Radio in Caracas.

The compromise was announced by Diego Cordovez, Ecuadorian ambassador to the United Nations, who mediated talks between Foreign Ministers Gert Rosenthal of Guatemala and Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela.

Panama will replace Argentina, whose two-year term ends December 31. On October 16, the assembly elected South Africa, Indonesia, Italy and Belgium to replace, respectively, outgoing Tanzania, Japan, Denmark and Greece.

The longest duel over a Security Council seat was in 1979, when Cuba and Colombia battled through 154 ballots over more than two months. Mexico was put forward as the compromise candidate.