Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi has said Islamabad will hold talks with New Delhi on the “basis of equality” and in a “dignified manner”, Geo News reported. Qureshi spoke to the news channel on Friday after the end of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Kyrgyzstan’s capital Bishkek.

“I have already stated that there was no structured meeting,” the foreign minister told the news channel when asked if Prime Minister Narendra Modi had met his Pakistani counterpart Imran Khan. “Yes, the meeting did take place, there was a handshake and exchange of pleasantries.”

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Qureshi claimed Pakistan had said what it had to. “India has not come out of its election mindset and the extreme position they had taken to influence their constituency and to keep their vote bank intact,” he claimed. “It is still confined in that.”

The foreign minister said it was up to India to engage with Islamabad on all outstanding matters. “So India has to make this decision, we are neither in haste, nor troubled,” he added. “When India prepares itself, it will find us prepared, but we will hold talks on the basis of equality, in a dignified manner.”

Qureshi said Pakistan’s approach was well thought out and realistic. “Neither we need to run after anyone, nor we need to demonstrate stubbornness,” he added.

On Friday, Narendra Modi told leaders at the summit that countries that support terrorism must be held accountable. He urged global leaders to tackle the problem. The prime minister had raised the problem of cross-border terrorism originating from Pakistan at his bilateral meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday.

The relations between the two countries nosedived after the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed militant group killed 40 Central Reserve Police Force personnel in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pulwama district on February 14. This escalated tensions between the neighbours. India retaliated by carrying out air strikes on a Jaish camp in Balakot in Pakistan.