NEW DELHI, June 30: India appeared to mark a significant shift in its policy with Pakistan on Monday, saying that it would not allow “terrorist attacks” on its forces to derail the peace initiative with Islamabad recently revived by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

“The prime minister has started the peace initiative with Pakistan. If someone across the border and wants to derail this process by directing such attacks, he will not succeed,” Defence Minister George Fernandes said at a public function.

Most of India’s key foreign interlocutors including China and the United States have urged New Delhi to help Islamabad’s effort to neutralize the alleged extremists and not to be provoked by their attacks.

Mr Fernandes told reporters in New Delhi after receiving an India-Nepal army expedition team which scaled Mt Everest and Mt Lhotse that attacks like the one in Jammu that killed 11 soldiers on Saturday would not deter New Delhi’s quest for peace with Pakistan.

He said the two alleged terrorists were Pakistani citizens and belonged to the banned Lashkar-i-Taiba. “No one can scare us,” he said while condemning the incident.

Mr Fernandes played down the widely reported failure of the army to guard its own camps in the sensitive Jammu and Kashmir state. He said the army “has always been on alert ... this was a peace station and the attackers were ‘fidayeen’ who wanted to commit suicide.”

Asked about the allegations of infiltration from across the border, Mr Fernandes claimed: “It is going on at the same level as it was before.”

Mr Fernandes also said that Pakistan should not seek to match India’s firepower in conventional weaponry.

He said while New Delhi wanted better relations with Islamabad, “Pakistan’s build-up to compete with India will remain a dream. It can never compete with India’s strength,” he said.