Community and its member States, has naturally presented views which we fully share. I hope that everyone has been sensitive to the desire for opening a dialogue, to the constructive and conciliatory spirit motivating the countries of the Community. For my part, I should like to try to shor,, here how, when France participates in United Nations activities for international economic co-operation and development, it sees the prospects for co-operation in the period opening up before us, which is, in turn, both uncertain and promising. The United Nations is a unique forum in which Governments meet and peoples recognize one another. In this forum, my country believes, it is essential to give new impetus today to the shared determination to co-operate in pronoting development. We are more fully agreed than in the past en the urgent need for action. It seems clear to me that we must take the opportunity of this session to reaffirm the universal desire to see that the peoples suffering from underdevelopnent overcome it and also to reaffirm the emerging consensus on certain principles of action in this area. If we succeed in the course of the present session in defining some of these principles sufficiently to articulate a strategy of concrete action around them for development in the 1990s, the United Nations will have indeed played its role with a view to the calendar of international events that lie ahead. JVM/12 A/S-18/PV. 2 52 (Mr. Pelletier, France) I am thinking first of the next event, the Paris Conference on the least developed countries, to be held in September. That Conference should give us an opportunity to take stock, without complacency, of the application of the Substantial New Progranme of Action and the performance of the economies of these countries and of the States and organizations 
**Analysis**
The text focuses on international cooperation and development, specifically in the context of the United Nations and the Paris Conference on the least developed countries. It mentions the need for action to promote development and overcome underdevelopment, as well as the importance of defining principles and strategies for development in the 1990s. This suggests that the text is primarily concerned with economic development and international cooperation.

**Category**
Economic development, International trade