UN General Assembly
1979

"Let us avail ourselves of this opportunity to address an appeal to the petroleum-producing countries and to the entire world concerning the need to establish without delay appropriate machinery to permit a logical application of the price of petroleum and its derivatives. Our position is not one of opposition to the establishment of just prices. On the contrary, we need such prices for our products. But we take exception openly with arbitrary price-fixing and an indiscriminate increase in the price of petroleum, which has been accompanied by substantial speculation on spot-market prices and which deprives our peoples of their prerogatives." 110. The Caracas declaration, from which I have just quoted, was signed on 12 March 1979 by the Presidents of Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic, as well as by the Head of Government of Spain. The views expressed referred to the urgency of seeking, at an international level, machinery to reader less difficult the fulfilment of development programmes for countries which lack petroleum and therefore face critical difficulties.