Venezuela Battles for Security Council Seat

A 36th round of voting was due to take place today in the contest for a non-permanent seat on the UN security council, amid signs Venezuela will withdraw for a compromise candidate.

Venezuela has been vying for one of the rotating 10 seats with Guatemala, which is being backed by the US. But neither has managed to win the necessary two-thirds majority of votes from UN members, though Guatemala has consistently had more votes.

Bolivia's president, Evo Morales, said earlier this week that Venezuela's president, Hugo Chavez, his ally, had already decided to withdraw Venezuela's candidacy for the two-year position and would back Bolivia as a compromise. However Guatemala vowed not to step down in favour of Bolivia, and Guatemalan officials said Caracas had not negotiated such a move with them.

Venezuela's ambassador to the UN, Francisco Arias Cardenas, also played down Mr Morales's comments. "There are several solutions. One of them is the one President Evo Morales is mentioning. Probably there will be other solutions," the ambassador told Reuters yesterday. "We are exploring solutions, we are exploring ways out."

Some political commentators said the attempt to push Bolivia was a face-saving tactic by Mr Chavez, who has portrayed the contest as a competition between Venezuela and the US because of the open US lobbying for Guatemala. Failure to win the seat on the 15-member security council is a setback for Mr Chavez, who set it as his foreign policy priority this year and wanted to use the council to be a leading anti-US voice on a world stage.

Mr Cardenas, who has been in talks with his Guatemalan counterpart at the UN ahead of today's voting, said Venezuela would not step aside if Guatemala remains in the race because that would be conceding victory to the United States. Venezuelan officials have also called for the US to stop "blackmailing" nations to support Guatemala.

Guatemala has said it will only consider withdrawing in place of a compromise candidate if Venezuela did the same.

However, Guatemala's foreign minister, Gert Rosenthal, said Guatemala would not give way to a Bolivian compromise candidacy. "We have not pulled out and we have no intention of doing so," he said. Mr Rosenthal told reporters in Guatemala City that the Bolivia idea "was apparently a unilateral decision by Venezuela because they have not notified me", Reuters reported.

Typically, regions decide by consensus which country will represent them. But the Guatemala-Venezuela contest has divided Latin America and turned into a battle for influence between Washington and Caracas.

Venezuela is a major oil supplier to the United States. But relations have deteriorated under Mr Chavez, who describes the superpower as his number one enemy and called the US president, George Bush, the devil in a UN speech last month.

Mr Morales, who also has strained relations with Washington because of his support for Mr Chavez and rejection of US drug policies, said the Venezuelan leader called him to say he would make way for his country to compete for the seat.

If Bolivia were to win the seat, Mr Chavez would probably claim it as a moral victory.

Possibilities mentioned by other countries for the rotating UN seat included Chile and Uruguay. Brazil's foreign minister, Celso Amorin, said Brazil favours a consensus candidate, despite the fact that his nation has expressed support for Venezuela.

Other compromise candidates that have been suggested include Costa Rica, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and Brazil.