CARACAS, Monday July 17, 2006 | Update
Venezuelan Executive Vice-President José Vicente Rangel
ensured that Venezuela gaining a non-permanent seat at the
United Nations Security Council would amount to a guarantee
for the region rather than a factor of disturbance.
In an interview with Chilean newspaper La Tercera, published
on Sunday, Rangel claimed that the Venezuelan candidacy to
the UN Security Council is "the most agglutinative in Latin
America," the Vice-President Office said in a press release.
"We have already secured support from the Southern Common
Market (Mercosur) and the Caribbean Community and Common Market
(Caricom). We will not be a factor of disturbance, conflict.
We are not interested in that. We want to promote understanding
in any scenario," he added.
On Sunday, Ahmed Benhelli, the Assistant Secretary General
for Political Affairs of the Arab League of Nations, said
the Arab world is to support Venezuela candidacy.
Benhelli made the announcement upon his arrival in Venezuela
for the Second South America-Arab Countries Meeting.
04:17 PM. Western Hemisphere. "Damned empire; I curse you one thousand times; some day you will be finished off and wrecked. I curse you one thousand times, empire." This is the least that President Hugo Chávez has uttered to refer to the US government. In urging the Bolivarian Armed Forces to prepare for war, he said that a US raid on Venezuela through Colombia would trigger and spread over the region "the 100-year war."