Not Likely
(T)Hugo Chavez has been effectively stymied at the UN in his bid to buy a seat on the UN Security Council. Pretty much everyone knows at this point that Venezuela will not be taking that seat. But if Chavez's protégé thinks Guatemala will step aside for him to step in and be Venezuela's proxy, he's been chewing too much of his famous coca.
Venezuelan officials on Tuesday denied Bolivian President Evo Morales's claim that Venezuela had decided to withdraw from the competition for a seat on the U.N. Security Council and would instead nominate his country as a candidate.
Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro demanded that Guatemala, its rival for the position, and the United States meet three conditions before Venezuela would drop its bid.
Guatemalan Foreign Minister Gert Rosenthal said a Bolivian compromise candidacy "was apparently a unilateral decision by Venezuela, because they have not notified me." He rejected the idea that Guatemala would step aside in favor of Bolivia.
"We have not pulled out, and we have no intention of doing so," he said in Guatemala City.
…..
"Comandante Chávez called me this morning and said he could not get the two-thirds he needed for the Security Council," Morales said from El Alto, Bolivia, referring to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. "Chávez said he will leave the candidacy to Bolivia."
Comandante? I think that tells you all you need to know about Bolivia's "president". He's nothing but a tool of (T)Hugo's and everyone in the world will see that one coming. Just not going to happen. (You know, if I was a Bolivian, I'd be asking myself, quite seriously, if we really wanted a president who openly declares himself to be at the command of another country. Not an ally, a servant).
UPDATE: More from the New York Times. They are reporting that Venezeula's candidacy is essentially regarded as dead in the UN. And Chavez is in trouble in the region.
“The speech played the most important role in what happened,” said Riordan Roett, the director of the Latin American Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University. “You can talk like that in Latin America, and people will have a chuckle, but there is traditional respect for protocol, and it was not amusing to a lot of people who see the U.N. as the forum for expressing third world views.”
“The speech really hurt his case,” said Enrique Berruga, the ambassador of Mexico. “Most members don’t want this place to be turned into a mockery. In the General Assembly, there are limits, and he went way beyond them.”
Another Latin ambassador, who said he knew of many countries that voted against Venezuela because of the speech, agreed that Mr. Chávez had stepped over a line.
“U.S.-bashing is acceptable, but not the U.N.-bashing that they thought Chávez’s speech amounted to because in the end this is everyone’s house, and a speech like that goes down the same dirty drain as the bitter criticisms of the U.S.,” the envoy said. He asked not to be identified because he was commenting on the leader of another South American country.
Asked if Mr. Chávez’s popularity might be flagging closer to home, Mr. Roett pointed out that presidential candidates who have been identified with Mr. Chávez in recent elections in Ecuador, Peru and Mexico all did badly. “For sure he’s not gone as a force, but people are less impressed with him than they were four or five years ago,” he said.
World news | Gaius Wednesday, 25 October , 2006
By David, Wednesday, 25 October , 2006 @ 11:08 am
Hugo Chavez’s big mouth is not his only problem. Oil prices are now heading south. Without high oil prices, Chavez will be unable to sustain Venezuela’s vaunted “social programs” that have helped him win his narrow election victories in Venezuela — and nor will he be able to continue buying influence with those petro-dollars. Chavez’s U.N. performance, moreover, underscored that there is really only one reason for his poor relations with the U.S. — it’s Hugo himself.