Venezuela
Leading The Race For
The UN Security Council Seat
By Stephen Lendman
19 August, 2006
Countercurrents.org
In
October, elections will take place for five non-permanent UN Security
Council seats to be held in 2007. One of them will be for the Latin
American seat now held by Argentina. The two leading regional contenders
vying to fill the opening are Venezuela and Guatemala, and the other
countries in the region comprising Latin America and the Caribbean (GRULAC)
will vote on which one gets it. If they're unable to reach a consensus,
which may happen, the choice will be up to the General Assembly where
it will take a two-thirds majority secret ballot vote process to select
the winner.
It's not hard to know which
country the US supports and why it's doing all it can to subvert the
chances of the other one. Guatemala has been a close US ally ever since
the CIA fomented a coup in 1954 to oust the country's democratically
elected leader Jacobo Arbenz Guzman. Ever since, the country has been
run by a succession of oppressive military and civilian governments
that turned Guatemala into pariah state compiling the hemisphere's worst
human rights record that never ended even after the 1996 UN brokered
Peace Accords that officially ended a brutal 36 year civil conflict
waged mainly against the country's indigenous Mayan majority that resulted
in the state-sponsored murder of 200,000 or more of its people.
Throughout the last half
century, the US treated Guatemala as a valued ally and ignored its atrocious
human rights record that Amnesty International continues to document.
The human rights organization finds that although Guatemala today is
nominally a democratic republic, it's abuses against its own people
continue unabated and its electoral process leaves much to be desired.
It led Amnesty to call Guatemala a "land of injustice." But
that's not an issue for the Bush administration that's exerted its typical
strong-arm bullying tactics to line up votes for its preferred candidate
it knows will back all US proposals in the Council. That's sure not
to happen if Venezuela under democratically elected President Hugo Chavez
wins the seat, which is why Washington is pulling out all the stops
to prevent it. Chavez is committed to building an alternative to the
neoliberal Washington consensus and is undeterred by the power and threats
against him by his dominant northern neighbor that wants Venezuela marginalzed
in the region and President Chavez ousted and replaced by someone willing
to serve the interests of capital. Chavez won't and Washington knows
it.
Venezuela On Track
to Win Based On Chavez's
Opposition to US Dominance
At this stage in the campaign,
Venezuela looks on track to win the Council seat although it's likely
to be a close vote. In lobbying for support, Venezuela has built its
campaign on the need to counter the Global North's one-sided brave new
world order agenda and especially to neutralize Washington's dominance
and misuse of power in the region and wanting to continue exploiting
it for its own imperial gain. Venezuela's Permanent Mission of the Bolivarian
Republic to the UN put it in terms of hoping to "be an element
of balance against hegemonic trends, in favor of the interests of countries
from the South with an independent position." The country's former
Foreign Minister Ali Rodriguez Araque put it in terms that: "This
has become an issue of national dignity, because a superpower launched
a campaign and exerts pressure on foreign countries." And Vice-Foreign
Minister for North America Mari Pili Hernandez added that his country
deserves the seat because it "respects the sovereignty of all nations
(and)has demonstrated that it is an independent country that does not
accept pressure from any (other) state."
Hugo Chavez personally has
been vigorously working to build a coalition of support to win the Council
seat and took his anti-imperialism campaign abroad in July to do it
visiting Iran, Russia, Belarus, Mali, Benin, Qatar and Vietnam. His
efforts have paid off in many parts of the world including in the US
dominated Middle East where Caracas recently earned observer status
in the Cairo-based Arab League. The organization's Deputy Secretary
General for Political Affairs Ahmed Benhelli soon plans to visit Venezuela
and said he would make "an effort to gain common support from all
countries of my region so that Venezuela can join the UN Security Council."
Chavez also sought support within the African Union at its July Summit
in Banjul. At it he proposed a program of cooperation between Africa
and Latin America based on the creation of four initiatives aimed at
closer economic ties between the two regions. Part of it involves an
oil-trade agreement known as PetroSouth. The effort may be working as
Ghana, Zibabwe and Mali have since indicated they will support Venezuela's
bid for the Security Council seat.
Chavez has also been active
in Latin American using his new leverage as a formal member of the Southern
Common Market Mercosur trade bloc that also includes Brazil, Argentina,
Uruguay and Paraguay with Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru
as associate members. A close eye is now on thus far undecided countries
like Chili and several others in the region to see if they can withstand
Washington's intimidation to support Venezuela as the candidate most
deserving of serving on the Council. Other countries in the region have
already shown they're willing to do it and have announced they will
vote for Venezuela in October. Those countries include the four other
Mercosur members as well as Bolivia, Cuba and the Caribbean Community
15 country trade bloc known as CARICOM. Opposed to Venezuela largely
because of US pressure are Mexico, Nicaragua, Hondurus, El Salvador,
Costa Rica, Colombia, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. On the
fence and being watched is Haiti under its new president Rene Preval
wo in his first term as the country's President in the 1990s governed
progressively meaning he should support his putative ally Hugo Chavez.
But US pressure is intense against him, and he's well aware of what
happened to former Haitian president and ally Jean-Bertrand Aristide
who was ousted from office by a US-instigated coup against him in February,
2004 only because he governed independently of Washington's authority.
It remains to be seen if Preval is courageous enough to support Chavez
or will succumb to the threat of becoming a victim of the same fate.
We'll soon know.
US Strong-Arm Bullying
To Defeat the Venezuelan Bid
The US anti-Venezuelan campaign's
main thesis is that the Chavez government's presence as a Council member
would be "disruptive (and) non-consensus-seeking," meaning,
of course, that any vote against a US position is one to be avoided
so the de facto ruler of the world will always get its way. One example
of this is Caracas' refusal to support the International Atomic Energy
Agency's (IAEA) US pressured resolution to have the Security Council
vote and act against Iran's perfectly legal commercial nuclear program.
The only reason the Bush administration opposes it is the same reason
it opposes the Chavez government. Both countries act independently of
US authority which is anathema to the ruling hegemon that wants total
control and no effective opposition. It wields a heavy hand against
any challenge to its authority and uses all means to do it including
preemptive war.
Washington Engendered
Opposition
Once again the usual heavy-handed
Washington pressure may be backfiring as it's already convinced some
Latin American and other nations to buck US authority and support Venezuela
for the Council seat. Washington tried before in 2005 to isolate Venezuela
in the Organization of American States (OAS) by backing a supposed process
of democratic rule in the region allowing member states the right to
intervene against any nation that violates the OAS charter. The plan
was a thinly veiled scheme aimed at Venezuela that the member states
saw through and rejected. It showed that when Washington goes too far,
as it's now doing, other nations on the receiving end of its bullying
may coalesce against it successfully.
That's what happened in 2001
when the US was humiliated and denied a seat on the UN Human Rights
Commission it was a founding member of and was replaced on it by Syria.
It happened again in 2003 at the World Trade Organization (WTO) Doha
round trade talks in Cancun and once more in July, 2006 in Geneva after
the resumption of these talks collapsed because enough participating
nations in them refused any longer to put up with the usual US negotiating
practice of demanding all take and offering little give in return. Right
now that's how it seems to be going in the race for the UN Security
Council seat. Venezuela looks to be on track to win it and likely will
as long as President Hugo Chavez makes no serious tactical error between
now and the October vote. So far in his campaigning efforts Chavez has
performed admirably, and if he continues to he may be on his way to
dealing the US still another stinging and humiliating defeat to go along
with all the others the US has been sustaining (politically and miitarily)
proving even the de facto ruler of the world is vulnerable when enough
other nations (or a determined "resistance") refuse to submit
and are willing to take it on.
Stephen Lendman
lives in Chicago and can be reached at [email protected].
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.