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Security Council Deadlocked
Venezuela and Guatemala slug it out for a place on the UN's top body
Voting for the Latin American seat on the UN's Security Council entered a second day as neither state was able to reach the two-thirds majority required to secure a place on the body.
Both are duelling to win one of the ten non-permanent seats. However, neither side is willing to back down in a more-than-usually ideologically fraught round of vote chasing.
Few will have failed to notice Venezuela's attempts to position itself as the leading voice of opposition to Washington in recent years. Guatemala, by contrast, is the US's candidate. Guatemala has easily beaten Hugo Chavez's Venezuela in all but one of the 22 votes so far (the sixth was a draw) but has been unable to convert more states to its cause.
Venezuela has made its bid for the non-permanent seat a rallying call for anti-American feeling: The stubborn support for its candidacy reflects not only the strength of this feeling, but political payback for the goodwill (or bribes, if you like) that Chavez has directed towards developing nations.
Washington accuses the oil-rich Chavez of buying support for its bid from Latin American, African and Caribbean states with lavish funding of infrastructure and health projects.
Venezuela, for its part, claims its redistribution of the oil windfall (around $1.3 billion dollars, by some guesses) is merely solidarity aid to the poor rather than influence-peddling - Chavez has already promised cheap heating oil to poor New Yorkers and Londoners.
However, Chavez's tough rhetoric on the US and other issues has alienated as many supporters as it has won, with other Latin American governments eyeing his leftish populism suspiciously.
At this stage neither is willing to blink. What happens next? Guatemala could try to win over some of Chavez's supporters by paying lip service to anti-American sentiment - its foreign minister has already declared angrily that his nation is not American's "stooge."
Another country could enter the race as a compromise candidate - Mexico, Costa Rica and Uruguay are all believed to be considering bids. Chile was the first nation to call for a compromise candidate to break the deadlock: Other nations must feel similarly, while UN officials will be embarrassed once again to see the UN's most senior body used as a haed-butting contest between an anti-American alliance and the US.
However, as there is no limit to the number of ballots before a candidate wins the seat, we could be in for a long haul.
