UN rebuffs Chavez on Security Council

The United Nations appears to be handing the Chavez regime an unexpected defeat this week - thanks to Chavez's bizarre speech at the General Assembly last month. Members not only fail to give Venezuela the two-thirds vote needed to admit it to the Security Council, but hand a signficant and surprise majority to the US-backed candidate, Guatemala.

With neither side coming close to the two-thirds of the UN's 192 members, a compromise Latin American candidate is likely to emerge.

"Diplomats said that his firebrand speech to this year’s UN General Assembly session, in which he railed against against the United States and called President Bush 'the devil,' may have hurt his nation’s chances," the Times of London reports.

(Meanwhile, the Cuban Communist Party mouthpiece Granma says the US is waging a "dirty war" against Venezuela at the United Nations.)