``No,'' he told reporters here when asked whether the missile test firings would lead to an arms race in the region.

Pakistan had informed India about its plans to test fire the Ghauri II missile today, he said after addressing a conference on ``India-UAE relations in the next decade''.

``If Pakistan is at peace and is economically and politically stable, it is not only good for Pakistan itself or for Indo-Pak relations, it will also be good for the whole geopolitical region of which United Arab Emirates is a part,'' he earlier said.

``The principal responsibility to improve the relations lies with India, and this government has done much more to resolve Indo-Pak issues than any other government in the last 20-30 years,'' he told the conference organised by Institute of DefenceStudies and Analyses (IDSA) and Emirates Centre for Strategic Studies and Research (ECSSR).

Singh, however, refused to reply to any queries on the ongoing political crisis faced by the Vajpayee Government, and simply smiled when asked for his reaction on the ``domestic missiles''.

Singh said if India, Pakistan and Bangladesh were not able to address their mutual problems as ``responsible nations'', it would have the ``potential for introduction of conflict'' in the UAE which has a large workforce from subcontinent.

``The happenings in the Gulf will affect the subcontinent, and so happenings here will affect the Gulf,'' he said emphasising the need for regional collaboration in addressing the ``unilateralism'' by developed powers in the region.

``India and UAE must address jointly, especially after the end of the Cold War, the increasing resorting to a kind of unilateralism by extra-regional powers on grounds of somewhat stressed issues of global interest,'' he said without directly referring to theIraq crisis.

``If we do not address this issue collectively, we will not be serving our interests well,'' he said.

``South Asian subcontinent has the natural equilibrium and balance, which if disturbed by outside forces, will take decades to be sorted out,'' he said giving the example of the Afghan crisis.

``Afghanistan is a classic example of what happens when conflicts of others' self interests permeates into the region. After the former USSR entered Afghanistan, the United States chose it as the territory where the Soviets can be brought down. The consequences are being faced by the whole of South Asia now... There has been proliferation of arms, narcotics and political turmoil almost turning into tribal anarchy,'' he said.

Stressing the need for closer ties between India and the UAE, he said despite there being an energy surplus in the Gulf region, there had been unequal distribution of hydrocarbon resources with the developed countries taking most of it.

``The tentacles of interests of the manygreat energy consumers have got entangled with national interests of Gulf countries. The UAE and other Gulf nations must address this issue as stability, security and peace of the region have been challenged by regional conflicts.

``It has posed a question mark on treating energy as security and also on the approach of the global community on the region,'' he said.

Singh questioned the logic behind not sharing of hydrocarbon resources by the developed countries with the developing world in the region, and said, ``The geopolitically contiguous region has been kept away from energy sharing and denied the resources purely by economic considerations.''

``We need to examine whether we can continue to perpetuate the existing imbalance,'' he said.

He further told the conference, attended by senior strategy planners from both India and the UAE, that the manpower inflow into the Gulf was a potentially disturbing factor unless ``handled with sensitivity, care, legislation, law and treaties''.