NEW DELHI, Oct 12: Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh claimed credit on Friday for supervising the most intensive talks with Pakistan in their bilateral ties and said that a perception about a slowdown in the dialogue was rooted in Islamabad’s ongoing domestic problems.

Dr Singh told reporters on the margins of a conference hosted by the Hindustan Times that his government would complete its five-year term and said if a nuclear deal with the United States, which threatened to bring down his coalition, did not materialise it would not be the end of life for him.

“In the last years we’ve never had such an intensive dialogue between India and Pakistan on all outstanding issues that we actually have had,” Dr Singh said and added: “If the process appears to have slowed down, these are largely the result of internal problems in Pakistan. I don’t want to talk about it.”

He said: “As far as our government is concerned we are committed to finding pragmatic and practical solutions to all outstanding probes that have plagued the India-Pakistan relationship. In the past I have always said repeatedly that the destiny of the people of India and Pakistan is closely inter-linked and I can’t think of a prosperous South Asia if there’s no reconciliation between India and Pakistan.”

Commenting on the bomb blast at the shrine of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti, Dr Singh said his government had to mobilise all “our resources and the will power of our country to defeat terrorist machines”.

He said that there was no lack of firmness of purpose when it came to dealing with terrorist act. “Terrorists have an advantage of choosing targets and it’s not possible to protect each and every soft target. But let there be no mistake about our resolve to meet this challenge head on.”