UN General Assembly
1973

12. It is this fundamental approach which has led my Government and my party to reject easy solutions and to take decisions which, if they have not been in our immediate interests, have been in accord with our principles and objectives. At the very time of our independence. Mauritania refused to became part of the former Common Organization for the Regions of the Sahara and expressed its unhesitating support for Algeria in its struggle for national liberation, to cite only that case. 13. In 1963, in the course of the third congress of our party, we decided to give up the subsidy that had been granted to us by France for our operational budget, opting thus for a policy of austerity and financial stringency. This will to make sacrifices, accepted by our country at the national as well as the individual levels, has always been part of our continuing search for true independence.