UNITED NATIONS, Nov 2: After brutal contest to secure a non-permanent seat in the 15-member UN Security Council, Venezuela and Guatemala agreed Wednesday to withdraw from their race and threw their support behind Panama.

The agreement was announced by Diego Cordovez, Ecuador’s Ambassador to the United Nations after weeks of voting that began on Oct 16.

The compromise came after 47 rounds of voting in the United Nations in which neither Guatemala nor Venezuela attained the two-thirds majority of the 192 member UN General Assembly needed for the seat.

Venezuelan diplomats had positioned the race largely as a contest between Mr. Chávez’s foreign policy and that of the Bush administration, describing efforts by the United States to support Guatemala’s candidacy as “gross blackmail.” The presidents of Bolivia and the Dominican Republic said they had been approached by Venezuelan officials as possible alternatives.

Several diplomats at the UN asked Venezuela and Guatemala to compromise and divide the two year tenure among themselves in order to secure the seat and demonstrate unity. But that proposal did not fly.

Venezuelan officials here have described the episode as a victory illustrating the capacity of a developing country to stand up to the “empire,” as the United States is frequently called in Venezuelan government circles.

“Chávez will try to find a way to use this to his favor,” said Elsa Cardozo, a political analyst at the Central University of Venezuela. “This is not a government looking to become more moderate.”

To the consternation of United States, Venezuela agreed with Syria and Iran on Wednesday to build a $1.5 billion oil refinery in Syria. Venezuela has been strengthening ties with the two Middle Eastern countries, in addition to other nations on the fringe of American influence like Belarus and Cuba in an effort to counter the power of the United States.

While Venezuela’s effort to win the seat for a nonpermanent member of the United Nations Security Council illustrated the limits of Mr. Chávez’s international ambitions, it also showed how Venezuela had been able to cement regional alliances. While the balloting was secret, news reports have said that South American countries like Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, which have increasingly important commercial ties with Venezuela, supported Mr. Chávez.

Most Caribbean countries also reportedly voted in favor of Venezuela, following intensive efforts by Mr. Chávez’s government to extend its exports of oil on favourable terms to countries in the region.

A turning point against Venezuela’s effort to win the seat seemed to come during a speech by Mr. Chávez at the United Nations in September, when he ridiculed Mr. Bush as the devil. That comment appeared to have backfired because many diplomats cite that speech as being offensive and voted for Guatemala.