MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Guatemala/Venezuela deadlock opens door for another candidate

Voting for one of Latinamerica's United Nations Security Council seats will go into a second day after delegates failed Monday to end a ten rounds deadlock.

Guatemala and Venezuela are the two candidates for the temporary seat with Guatemala ahead in all voting rounds but still short of the 124 needed to win.

Although the ballot is secret Guatemala is backed by the United States and European countries while Venezuela, according to Caracas has the support of Mercosur, the Caribbean Community of Nations, the Arab League, China, a group of African nations and Russia.

If no compromise is reached on Guatemala or Venezuela, a consensus candidate will have to be found with the necessary votes. Countries mentioned are Costa Rica, Panama and Uruguay.

Guatemala was ahead in the early rounds of Monday's voting until Venezuela managed to recover but in the final rounds slipped back again. Round ten ended with 77 votes for Venezuela and 110 for Guatemala, but still short of the two-thirds majority required.

Venezuela's UN ambassador Francisco Arias Cardenas blamed his country's short performance in the vote on lobbying by the US.

"We're not competing with our brother country (Guatemala)," he said. "We are competing with the most powerful country on the planet."

"Whatever the result Venezuela "has won the battle" said Venezuelan vice president Jose Vicente Rangel arguing that "we have uncovered the grotesque arm twisting capacity of the (US) empire".

The fifteen seats UN Security Council is made up of five permanent members, China, the US, Russia, the UK and France plus ten from regional blocks representing Africa, Latin America, Asia, Western Europe and Eastern Europe.

The other regional seats, which are rotated every two years, went to Indonesia, South Africa, Italy and Belgium in the first round of voting Monday.

Latinamerica is currently represented by Peru and Argentina which leaves the seat next December.

The race has been the most dramatic at the Security Council since Cuba ran against Colombia in 1979, at the height of the Cold War. It took three months of voting to resolve, with Mexico eventually winning as the compromise candidate.