UN General Assembly
1998

In this regard, we stress the need for debt-relief measures to be accompanied by concessional financial assistance, particularly to the least developed countries, with the aim of enhancing the implementation of economic reforms and creating a stable environment that enables countries to extricate themselves from the debt overhang. The international reverberations of the recent financial turmoil in Asia and elsewhere, I believe, point to the futility of any notions that any nation can play outside the rules, that any nation in this world can stand alone. In my view, the present approach of certain industrialized countries who require developing countries to adhere to standards or policies which they themselves do not observe, or seem unable to observe, will severely test relations between the developed and the developing countries in the next century. We must stand together if we are not to jeopardize the prosperity enjoyed by hundreds of millions today and the hopes of billions more for a life of dignity and a healthy measure of comfort â€” nothing more, nothing less.