Panama To Take Argentina's UN Security Council Seat

by Mike Godfrey, for LawAndTax-News.com, New York

07 November 2006

Panama is set to become Argentina's replacement on the UN Security Council after the body's Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC) delayed the decision for several days last week because some English-speaking Caribbean members were reportedly upset that they had not been adequately involved in the process.

Guatemala, backed by the US, and Venezuela, backed by some 'non-aligned' states, had been fighting over the seat for weeks, with neither gaining the requisite two-thirds majority despite 47 rounds of voting.

Guatemala and Venezuela agreed to withdraw in favour of Panama on Wednesday, but GRULAC did not give in until Friday. Now the General Assembly will rubber-stamp Panama's candidacy today and the country will take its seat on January 1st for two years, along with four other non-permanent members of the Security Council: Belgium, Indonesia, Italy and South Africa.

General Assembly spokesperson Gail Bindley-Taylor Sainte told a news briefing: “Both Ministers stressed that Panama was chosen as it was a country with which both nations had close ties.”

The Council’s five other non-permanent members, whose terms end on 31 December 2007, are Congo, Ghana, Peru, Qatar and Slovakia. The five permanent members, the only ones with veto power when voting, are China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton welcomed Venezuela's failure to secure a seat, saying that President Hugo Chavez had shot himself in the foot by delivering an interminable rant to the General Assembly in September in which he called US President George W. Bush 'the devil' and suggested that the September 11 attacks on the United States were self-inflicted.

Panama's election is a testimony to how far the country has come since the dark days of General Noriega, on many levels, including on the economic front. “Panama’s economy has grown at a rate of more than 6 percent during the past three years, and the growth rate is expected to reach 7 percent this year,” said Jane Armitage, World Bank director for Central America recently. “This excellent growth performance in part reflects the past efforts by the Government of Panama to restore greater fiscal discipline and thereby strengthen the overall foundation for sustaining broad-based economic growth.”

Recommended