UN General Assembly
1969

filled by other means. We are aware of the installation of certain logistic arrangements in islands in the Indian Ocean. Developments of this type are not calculated to promote security and ease tensions. Many nations in Asia view them with concern. To seek to prevent such developments within the Indian Ocean area is not to interfere with the freedom of the high seas. One of the most precious of all freedoms is the freedom from fear and that could be ensured if the Indian Ocean area were declared an area of peace and if all countries accepted such a declaration and honoured it. 161. The United Nations is on the eve of launching a Second Development Decade. Profiting by the experience of the First Development Decade, a strategy for the 70s is being carefully worked out. One of the vital elements in this strategy must be the determination of realistic rates of economic growth for individual nations and for the world as a whole. These rates must be more than an aspiration.