I AGREE with Mujeeb Rahman in his comments that curbing and restricting the international arms trade would have a beneficial and healing effect in the world – Proper sanctions call (Keighley News, September 7).

Unfortunately the United Kingdom is the second highest exporter of arms (source: Independent, September 5, 2016) after the United States and sells arms to regimes with appalling human rights records. The arms trade is fuelling conflict throughout the globe.

Some say the trade helps to make a safer world but it has done nothing to curb terrorism or the fear posed by states such as North Korea flexing their military muscle.

There are steps the United Kingdom could take that would lessen our military culture and encourage a more peaceful world. Whilst we rightly acknowledge those who have been killed or injured in military conflict on Remembrance Sunday, is it necessary to supplement this with Armed Forces Day? Also must our royal princes take up posts in the military when they could take up positions in civilian life?

President Eisenhower, the distinguished World War Two soldier in an address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in 1953, said: “Every gun made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.”

Huge resources are being used in the arms trade when they could better be deployed to solve the problems afflicting mankind.

JOHN COPE Oakworth