PRESIDENT BARACK Obama started his five-nation Latin American tour yesterday in Brazil –one of the five major countries to have abstained from last week UN Security Council’s ‘no-fly zone’ resolution on Libya, while France  was intensifying its belligerent mood against the regime of President Muammar Gaddafi with French military aircraft firing the first shots across Libyan territory.
By coincidence, some seven years ago, last month, when Haiti’s freely-elected President, Jean Bertrand Aristide was ousted from power in the face of widespread political turmoil, it was France’s President Nicolas  Sarkozy, who, along with then US President George Bush, had also played a key role for regime change in that former French colony.
This time around, in an entirely different scenario and with much graver implications for international peace and security, the French leader found an equally enthusiastic ally against the Libyan regime of Gaddafi in Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron. Together, they had relentlessly pushed for the UN ‘no-fly zone’ vote as they also prepared to bomb, if necessary, strongholds of Gaddafi, currently faced with a tough rebellion against dictatorial governance.
It so happens, as the ‘war against Gaddafi’ has split the global powers at the UN, and now threatens to rupture the geography and unity of Libya as one nation, the ousted Aristide is back in Haiti from seven years in exile in South Africa. He is closely following the conduct of today’s second-round Presidential run-off election in his country.
For his part, President Obama is in Latin America in search of improved trade and investment that could help contribute to his new initiatives on job creation at home at a time of widening domestic, social and political discontent. At the same time, renowned for his political astuteness, President Obama can hardly ignore the pertinent message telegraphed by the collective abstention votes of the BRIC (referring to Brazil, Russia, India and China)countries and Germany.
The ‘Guardian (UK)’ was quite clear with a message of its own in reporting in its Friday’s edition that Britain, France and the US may have achieved a “short-term victory,” but the “abstentions” of Brazil, Russia, India, China and Germany “send a signal about the future…”
While reasoning that China and Russia may have opted to abstain, rather than use their respective veto — “due largely to the influence of the Arab League (as a regional voice), the ‘Guardian’ noted:
“The German vote was a reminder that western solidarity cannot be taken for granted after Iraq. More importantly,” it added, “Brazil and India — two rapidly growing powers widely backed for permanent seats in a reformed Security Council — showed that their geopolitical instincts lie with Russia and China. For them, issues of sovereignty and non-interference trumped human rights concerns…”
We shall continue to monitor developments as they relate to the internal conflicts in Libya and the external interventions that could more than intensify what has so far been viewed as part of the political conflagration, in which a number of countries in the Middle East and North Africa are currently involved, with bitter, bloody consequences.