Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad today called on all nations to desist from engaging in an armaments race as it would bring about devastating consequences on developing countries in the world..

Speaking at the Kuala Lumpur World Peace Conference, Mahathir said competitive stockpiling has encouraged arms dealers to continue developing newer and more devastating weapons as evident from the range of weapons used in recent wars such as cluster bombs, incendiary bombs, dirty bombs, as well as heat-seeking missiles.

As a result of this, he said that developing countries have had to pay the price in the form of deliberately launched wars for the purposes of weapons testing, as well as the wastage of scarce resources on items which have no return on investment.