New Delhi: Promising to intensify dialogue with Pakistan in all areas, External Affairs Minister K Natwar Singh today (May 24, 2004) said that the differences with it would be ironed out through negotiations.

"The dialogue for friendship and good neighbourliness with Pakistan will continue and will be intensified in all areas and differences will be ironed out through negotiations," Singh said in his South Block office shortly after taking charge of the ministry.

"We will further strengthen, widen and deepen our relations with Pakistan," he said maintaining that the "bedrock" of India's relations with Pakistan was the 1972 Simla Agreement and subsequent agreements and declarations between the two countries.

Singh, who has served as India's Ambassador to Pakistan from 1980-82, said "I have some personal knowledge of the complexities and subtleties of Indo-Pak relations."

Describing Indo-US ties as multifaceted, he said as two great democracies, "It is in our interest, it is in their interest and the interest of the world community that relations between India and the US should be on a steady course and not episodic."