UN General Assembly
1972

169. We do, however, share the concern expressed at UNCTAD's third session over the question of linking special drawing rights to additional development assistance. As a developing country, we are also concerned with increased freight rates and maritime transport costs, as well as with comprehensive international agreements on primary commodities. Our continued development to a large extent depends on the efforts of the international community to reach agreement on equitable solutions to these development difficulties that have engaged the attention of the UNCTAD secretariat. In this connexion, my Government also welcomes the forthright manner in which the importance of expanding trade links among the developing countries was pointed out in Santiago. We believe that the lessons learned from successive UNCTAD conferences since 1964 ought to lead to the inescapable conclusion that whatever UNCTAD may achieve, whatever breaches the developing countries may succeed in making in the protectionist wall of the rich nations, in the final analysis the problem of the economic emancipation of the developing countries is a problem only they can solve through their own united efforts and strategic economic choices. The salvation of the developing countries, we believe, cannot but be most materially assisted by the developing countries themselves and by economic methods and choices peculiarly suited to the realities of the developing world.