Prometheus 6

"Chávez was not able to turn his world tours and anti-American rhetoric into enough votes to win the Council seat. But neither could the US impose its candidate, and it got bruised fighting Chávez off," says Miguel Tinker Salas, a specialist in Latin American issues at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif.

"It's like the lightweight boxer who can hold off the heavyweight for rounds and rounds," he adds. "It ends up saying more about the limits of the heavyweight."

United Nations compromise shows limits to US power
With the preferred US plan out, Panama emerges as the choice for a Security Council seat.
By Howard LaFranchi | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
WASHINGTON

A compromise reached between Venezuela and Guatemala over a United Nations Security Council seat they both wanted means that Panama will take the coveted two-year post instead.

But the outcome of what was more broadly billed as a battle pitting Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez against the United States means that neither the superpower nor its Latin nemesis got exactly what it wanted.

To be sure, the primary US objective was to keep Mr. Chávez off the Security Council, and in that it succeeded. Chávez had sought the seat to needle the US - which the leftist leader sees as the bane of developing countries.

But neither was the US able to see its preferred candidate, Guatemala, victorious. And a solution came only after weeks of fighting and stalemate in the UN General Assembly that exposed both the many fault lines traversing Latin America and the limits of US power in the region.