Interior Minister José Miguel Insulza of Chile, center, the next head of the Organization of American States,
in Santiago with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez of Mexico.
Posted on 04/30/2005 7:46:12 AM PDT by OESY
RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr. 29 - In a rebuff to the Bush administration's efforts to press Latin America to take a tougher stance on Cuba and Venezuela, a Chilean Socialist emerged Friday as the consensus choice to become secretary general of the Organization of American States.
The O.A.S. is scheduled to convene in Washington on Monday to formally elect the Chilean, Interior Minister José Miguel Insulza, 62. His opponent, Luis Ernesto Derbez, the Mexican foreign minister and Washington's favored candidate, withdrew Friday afternoon after negotiations in Santiago, Chile, that involved Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and several of her South and Central American counterparts.
It is the first time in the organization's history that a candidate initially opposed by the United States will lead the 34-member regional group. Until it became clear that the numbers were not in its favor, the United States sought twice to block Mr. Insulza, by first supporting a Salvadoran and then Mr. Derbez.
The selection process was dogged by contention and deadlock for months. It finally came to balloting on April 11, but five rounds of voting all ended in a 17-to-17 tie between Mr. Insulza and Mr. Derbez, split largely along North-South lines.
American officials traveling with Ms. Rice, who was in the Chilean capital, described her as having brokered the deal that allowed Mr. Insulza to claim victory.
But some South American diplomats suggested Friday that the shift in the United States position was a calculated retreat in response to warnings to Ms. Rice in Brazil and Colombia earlier in the week that Washington was risking a potentially embarrassing loss.
"Secretary Rice has supported a consensus, and therefore the candidate of the United States is now me," Mr. Insulza said at a news conference with Ms. Rice and Mr. Derbez on Friday. "For that reason, nobody should feel defeated."
Mr. Insulza also said the organization must broaden its mission and begin to "hold governments that are not governed democratically accountable" for their actions. Aides to Ms. Rice said she had insisted on such language, which is clearly aimed at President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, the most outspoken South American critic of the Bush administration.
The O.A.S. was founded in 1948, part of the same post-World War II American effort to construct a multilateral foreign policy that also led to the creation of entities like NATO.
The United States contributes about 60 percent of the organization's $76 million annual budget and has traditionally played the dominant role in the group, whose missions include monitoring elections and mediating political disputes in member countries.
Washington's decision to back down and support Mr. Insulza ends a dispute that had become "a real mess, a bitter fight," said Michael Shifter, a senior policy analyst at Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based research group. "It's going to require a lot of work, a lot of diplomacy, to repair things, but this process has not exactly endeared U.S. officials to the joys of multilateralism in the Western Hemisphere."
The standoff began to take shape in October, when the newly chosen, Washington-backed secretary general, former President Miguel Ángel Rodríguez of Costa Rica, resigned two weeks after taking office to face accusations of corruption at home.
The United States transferred its support to another Central American, former President Francisco Flores of El Salvador, but immediately encountered wide resistance. Much of that came because Washington's support for Mr. Flores was widely seen as a reward for El Salvador's role as the only country in Latin America to send troops to Iraq.
It became clear that Mr. Flores had no chance of winning, and on April 8 he withdrew. The election was then transformed into a proxy fight over Cuba, which was expelled from the O.A.S. after Fidel Castro took power, and its main Latin American ally, Venezuela.
The United States has repeatedly cited Chile as an example of economic and political stability for the rest of the continent, and a free trade agreement between the countries went into effect last year. But even though he is considered a moderate, Mr. Insulza is nominally a Socialist, and he not only favored steps to bring Cuba back into the organization but also had the support of Mr. Chávez.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld visited South America last month in what was seen as an effort to stitch together an anti-Chávez coalition, but got nowhere. Ms. Rice came to the region this week with much the same mission and received the same chilly reception from governments for whom the principles of nonintervention and sovereignty are nearly sacred.
"It's counterproductive both to see what she is saying on Venezuela and what they are doing at the O.A.S., but the U.S. just doesn't seem to get the political and diplomatic reality," said Riordan Roett, director of the Western Hemisphere program at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.
If Washington wants South America to act as an interlocutor with Mr. Chávez, he added, "it would have been easy to drop our support for Derbez and push for a consensus at the O.A.S."
Still, Mr. Chávez made the situation difficult for his allies with insults aimed at the United States and the organization.
The same ole Gray Lady at the New York Times shows solidarity with her Socialist allies.
I can't stand that arrogant jerk.
Perhaps it's time to adjust, Chavez could pick up the slack from all the money he's stealing from his doomed country
It sure seems fashionable to dis the U.S. these days. Someday they'll all regret their sh*tty attitudes, probably as the mosques are being built over the ground where their churches once stood.
It amazes me that the critics are there whether the administration is being multilateralist (mostly) or acting alone (with only 20 allies).
The United States contributes about 60 percent of the organization's $76 million annual budget.
NEWS ALERT:
U.S. BENDING OVER TO TAKE IT IN THE SHORTS AGAIN
Naw!
Just another example a Jayson Blair writer/liar for the NY Slimes.
Here is the reality:
American officials traveling with Ms. Rice, who was in the Chilean capital, described her as having brokered the deal that allowed Mr. Insulza to claim victory.
"Secretary Rice has supported a consensus, and therefore the candidate of the United States is now me," Mr. Insulza said at a news conference with Ms. Rice and Mr. Derbez on Friday. "For that reason, nobody should feel defeated."
Pair that with the fact that the US is supporting French Socalist Pascal Lamy to run the WTO and you are starting to get what some of us have been saying for years.
"Free trade" is all about global socialism.
Lamy worked for Crédit Lyonnais when they fraudulently attempted to get control of California's failed Executive Life Insurance Co. in the early 1990s. Good to know we will have such a nice, honest socialist unconstitutionally regulating US trade.
FYI
What a disaster. I hate to say, but, to me, things in the Americas are going in the same direction they were during the late 1970s. Please W, don't go down in history as another Jimmuh!
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