At United Nations headquarters in New York and in capitals throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, the United States stepped up pressure this past week to block Venezuela's election to the UN Security Council, as Washington appeared to be using the vote as a vital test of its global influence.

Claude Robinson

"We are deeply concerned that Venezuela would seek to disrupt the work of the Security Council and use it for ideological grandstanding rather than concrete problem-solving", says a US diplomatic note obtained by the BBC and published on its website Thursday.

The document, called "Defeating Venezuela in the 2006 non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council", states that "Venezuela has shown that it is more concerned with disrupting international events than in working constructively to achieve common goals".

One of the specific US concerns, according to the note, is that Venezuela may use its seat on the Security Council to frustrate efforts by the George W Bush administration to mobilise support to take action against Iran for allegedly pursuing nuclear weapons, an allegation the Iranians deny.

Ironically, the worry about possible sanctions against Iran is being raised at a time when the US has switched from an aggressive posture towards Iran to negotiating a deal that would help Teheran develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. 
Venezuelan foreign minister Ali Rodriguez denies that his country will be disruptive, telling the BBC, "We will use our position there [on the Security Council] to support peace in the world and refuse all kinds of attacks on peaceful countries."

Given the history of bad-mouthing between Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and President Bush, one would have to be incredibly naive to believe that Caracas would not relish the chance to make life uncomfortable for the US from a prestigious perch on the Security Council, if the opportunity presented itself.

Equally, it is clear that both Washington and Caracas are using whatever leverage they can to influence the outcome of the vote, which is expected in the General Assembly in October.
That's part of the meaning behind the recent statement by US Ambassador to Jamaica Brenda la Grange Johnson that Jamaica now stands to gain as much as $450 million in grants from the US Millennium Challenge Fund.

RICE. told her Chilean counterpart that a vote for Venezuela would lump Chile with a group of 'losers'

It's also part of the meaning behind what is being called Chavez's 'petro-diplomacy' evidenced by initiatives like the Petro-Caribe accord under which several CARICOM countries, including Jamaica, will see substantial reduction in their energy bill along with other benefits.
Five non-permanent seats on the Security Council become vacant at the end of December, 2006, namely Argentina, Denmark, Greece, Japan and Tanzania.

They will be replaced by countries from their respective regions. Our regional group, Latin America and the Caribbean Group, is the only one in which there is competition for the seat as Venezuela and Guatemala are competing to replace Argentina.
Normally, the regional groupings make their selections, which are then endorsed by the General Assembly. In the event that there is deadlock in the group then the members of the General Assembly makes the selection.

The diplomatic battle being waged at the UN in New York, in capital cities in Latin America is to secure commitments for one or the other candidate ahead of the actual vote.
The UN Security Council is composed of five permanent members and 10 non-permanent members, who are elected for two year terms by members of the UN General assembly. Each member holds the presidency of the council for a one-month period, on a rotating basis.

Washington has publicly backed Guatemala's rival effort to take the two-year rotating council next year, but it has reportedly gone further in recent weeks - threatening retaliatory action against Latin American countries who support the Venezuelan bid, according to media reports.

The Los Angeles Times reported that Chile is one of the countries under pressure. Washington has agreed to sell the country F-16 warplanes, but has since warned that Chilean pilots would not be trained to fly them if the government backed Venezuela's bid.

One Chilean newspaper reported US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told her Chilean counterpart that a vote for Venezuela would lump Chile with a group of 'losers.' Brazil, Argentina, Cuba, Bolivia, Uruguay, Paraguay and several Caribbean nations have already backed Venezuela.
The vote must have been one of the issues discussed recently by Chilean President Michele Bachelet when she visited Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller.

At issue for small countries like Jamaica is how best to protect their own interest when 'big power' interests collide and, at the same time, adhere to fundamental principles that ought to govern relations between sovereign states, including the important principle of multilateral cooperation.

Bruce Golding,  the Leader of the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party, according to The Gleaner of Monday, June 12, "gave an unequivocal no to supporting Venezuela. " Earlier, he had issued an unsolicited warning to the Jamaican government not to upset the US by its vote on the issue.

As Ian Boyne said in his commentary last week (Sunday Gleaner, June 18) the only explanation for Golding's outburst  was that it was 'vulgar and desperate courting of the United States' as a counterweight to the overwhelming popular support for the prime minister.

This is not to say that the issue is of no importance, or that the choice is easy. Rather, it is to say that the decision cannot be made on the basis of uncritical support without regard to principle.

According to Minister of State in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, Senator Delano Franklyn, the question of which way to vote 'is still under consideration' and will be further elaborated when CARICOM leaders meet in St Kitts next week for their annual summit.

The leaders, including Prime Minister Simpson Miller who will be participating in her first CARICOM Summit as head of government, will be seeking a common regional position, which will not be easy given different national interests.

Trinidad and Tobago, as the energy exporter in the group, sometimes has competing interests with Venezuela over the details of the Petro-Caribe agreement, but from all accounts has no political or diplomatic issues with Caracas.
Guyana has a border dispute with Venezuela but Chavez and President Bharrat Jagdeo are reportedly on good terms, and Guyana is a major beneficiary of Petro-Caribe..

For more than 40 years, Jamaica has enjoyed good diplomatic and economic relations with a succession of Venezuelan governments, including the period of the 1980s when the Edward Seaga administration benefited from balance of payments support in excess of US $300 million. 

Now, with an annual oil import bill around the US billion dollar mark, and with oil prices trending upwards, the Petro-Caribe deal, which will substantially reduce that bill, is of vital importance to Jamaica.

Belize, which shares a Caribbean as well as a Central American identity, may be conflicted. Some 15-18% of the workforce in Belize are from Guatemala and so they are likely to side with Central America rather than CARICOM.

In these circumstances, I expect that there will be a large CARICOM majority support Venezuela. Indeed most of the 35 countries that make up the Latin American and Caribbean Group are likely to back Caracas.

Larry Birns, a Latin American expert at the liberal think tank the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, predicted the US diplomatic offensive would fail.

"The Latin American caucus at the UN has always been sensitive to US intervention in their choice of the region's representative, " he said. "The US previously attempted to isolate Chavez in the OAS [Organisation of American States] and failed. To my mind, there is no question that it will backfire. "

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