UN General Assembly
1984

115. We can no longer avoid recognizing that if current distortions persist, the existing crisis will culminate in decisively hurting everyone, poor and rich, debtors and creditors alike. As we approach the end of the century, the economic world, like the political world, has become indivisible. Interdependence is not a rhetorical image: it is a historical necessity that demands political action in the sense of co-operation and not of regression or isolation. 116. To conclude, I should like to return to my initial remarks on the role of the United Nations in the present-day world. 117. Too frequently, the Organization has seen itself transformed into a "forum for sterile confrontation", as President Figueiredo stated when he addressed the General Assembly in 1982. In acknowledging the virtual paralysis of the machinery of multilateral diplomacy, Brazil seeks a higher objective: the preservation and perfection of the United Nations, to make it what it should be, the forum par excellence for settling controversies between States and promoting international co-operation.