UN General Assembly
1967

67. But a mechanical decision to appropriate a given percentage of armaments budgets for aid to developing countries can hardly be the solution. What we need is a meaningful action for a decisive change in the whole international situation. Economics and politics condition each other. A world free from war would mean a world of economic growth. International tensions always have a negative effect upon international economic relations. Economic blackmail and discrimination in trade, which are inseparable from international tension, undermine economic co-operation. I am uttering a truism, but one that is disregarded. 68. The latest world economic survey indicates that the developing countries now have the lowest rate of growth in industrial, commodity and agricultural production. The terms of trade continue to deteriorate. The only positive exception here is the trade between the developing and the socialist countries, which in the short period from 1960 to 1965 doubled in volume. This is the background against which the United Nations has to act.