New Delhi: India on May 1 asked Pakistan to consider whether raising the Jammu and Kashmir issue in the UN Security Council would be compatible with the 'hand of friendship' extended by it and rejected a suggestion that the gesture for peace was made under US pressure.

"It is for Pakistan to decide whether raising the Jammu and Kashmir issue in the Security Council is compatible with extending the hand of friendship" (by Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee), an External Affairs Ministry spokesman said.

He was replying to a question on a report from Islamabad that Pakistan planned to use its presidency of the Security Council this month to table a proposal for settlement of the Kashmir issue.

Asked if New Delhi's gesture for peace came under Washington's pressure, the spokesman said, "India does not work under pressure on these issues and India does not accept pressures.

"We have our foreign policy, we have our concerns. We are quite prepared to meet them. I think the presumption of pressures should be discounted once and for all."

To a question on US state department's report on global terrorism that extremist violence in J&K was sponsored from across the border, the spokesman said, "It just confirms what has been evident to us for a long time and we have always believed to be true that cross-border terrorism has been fuelled from across the line of control (LoC). It contradicts Pakistan's claims on the contrary."

PTI