Malaysia's defense minister said Friday that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations will remain a “nuclear free area.”

Speaking at a news conference on the sidelines of an ASEAN meeting in Malaysia, Mohamed Khaled Nordin said: “ASEAN is a zone of peace and nuclear free, of course our view is that we try to avoid anything that brings great calamity to human kind.”

Nordin had been asked to respond to U.S. President Donald Trump’s plans to restart nuclear weapon tests.

ASEAN Secretary-General Kao Kim Hourn separately told reporters that “the world should never see the use of nuclear weapons.”

“I think it's important that we be reminded,” he added.

Trump said on social media Thursday that U.S. nuclear testing would be on an “equal basis” with Russia and China.

There was no signs the U.S. would start detonating warheads, but Trump offered few details in what seemed to be a significant shift in U.S. policy.

AP video by Syawalludin Zain