UN General Assembly
1964

150. Indeed, the tragedy of under-development presents all the more astonishing and paradoxical a picture when the astronomical sums that are still devoted to enlarging the nuclear arsenal and to the arms race are also taken into consideration. At the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development the Iranian delegation suggested the immediate diversion of from 1 to 3 per cent of the military expenditure of the great Powers into a fund to be created for the execution of any plan aimed at the improvement of international trade and the acceleration of economic development. 151. We still believe that any initiative in this direction would not only be welcomed as an historic step in the establishment of a new order based upon the concept of the long-term interest of all, but that it would allow us for the first time to take the only realistic approach to a permanent solution of the problem of under-development.