UN General Assembly
1973

41. In the first place, almost every developing country is in debt — debt that has come about often from the so-called foreign aid, a conversion of part of the resources which have been taken from our lands and which are now reluctantly returned to us at unbelievably high rates of interest with a number of subtle strings. The huge interest on these debts has accumulated over the years, and in some cases has exceeded the principal. How can debtor countries service these debts when their economic growth falls far short of what the United Nations itself considers acceptable and desirable? How can the under-equipped world — to borrow the phrase from President Mobutu — free itself from factors not inherent in the economies of the developing countries, as some people would want us to believe, but in the nature of the world economic system dictated by the developed countries.