The first special session, held on 11 April 2005 at the OAS headquarters, ended in a tie between Chile's Interior Minister José Miguel Insulza and Mexico's Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez, and forced the Organization to schedule a second round of elections for 2 May 2005 to end the unprecedented stalemate.
After a period of uncertainty lasting several months, it was decided that rather than wait until the regular General Assembly (to take place in Fort Lauderdale, United States, in June 2005), a special session of the General Assembly would be held at OAS headquarters on 7 April 2005; that date was later changed to 11 April, due to Pope John Paul II's funeral.
Chile announced Insulza as its candidate two days later; it claimed the support of Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, Venezuela, Uruguay and most of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM)-bloc member states.
A press report published in the Buenos Aires daily La Nación on 12 April indicated that during that break, Roger Noriega of the U.S. state department and the foreign ministers of the Mercosur countries had been able to convince Grenada and Paraguay, respectively, to change their votes.
This is a list of the member countries according to their statements of official support for one or other of the candidates, together with inferences of the voting intentions of the other states as reported in the international press.
The press had initially speculated that Manuel Rodríguez Cuadros, the current foreign minister of Peru, would have been a likely "consensus" candidate in the new scenario, and on 12 April, the Lima daily Perú 21 gave the name of former transitional president Valentín Paniagua as another option.
However, in a surprise development, and after intense negotiations between Mexico, Chile and the United States at the third Ministerial Meeting of the Community of Democracies in Santiago, Chile, on 29 April, Colombian foreign minister Carolina Barco announced that Derbez was withdrawing his candidacy, "in order to prevent a breakdown of hemispheric relations".