UN General Assembly
1962

141. It should be the task of the United Nations to take effective steps to promote this complete revision of the terms of trade so as to meet the desperate situation of the peoples and the threat to their liberty. In this connexion it is appropriate to mention two items of special significance and interest on the agenda of the seventeenth session: the question of holding an international conference on trade problems [item 36] and international measures to assist in offsetting fluctuations in commodity prices [item 37]. In recent years the United Nations has managed to marshal opinion in favour of the protection of the primary products which are essential for the economic and social progress of the less developed States. My country has the honour of having been one of the first to stress the urgent, compelling necessity of, action at the highest international level to remedy the plight of the countries whose economies depend on primary products and which, are consequently at a disadvantage in relation to the highly developed industrial countries. An example of what the United Nations can and should do in this direction is the recent United Nations Coffee Conference, at which the producing and importing countries succeeded in concluding the International Coffee Agreement for 1962, which provides for world marketing of this product on a basis which will guarantee social justice and economic progress to the peoples of the exporting countries.