External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha has said the peace process with Pakistan will continue.

But he said cross-border terrorism had to end to make the dialogue process meaningful and cooperative.

"We have not been boxed into a corner. We have all our options open," Sinha said in Karan Thapar's 'Hard Talk' programme on BBC World.

"As far as the peace process is concerned, we are going ahead with it and we will continue to go ahead with it," he said.

"We are encouraging a lot of things and we are taking a number of steps... it (the peace process) is not mired in quick sand," he said.

"We are making progress. The progress will have to be slow, the progress will have to calibrated and we will have to be patient. You can't solve the problem of five decades in five minutes. If anyone expects to do that, I would say please change your mindset," Sinha said.

"What we need with Pakistan is not one round of dialogue but a sustained dialogue over a period of time," he said. He dismissed a suggestion that Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had extended his hand of friendship to Pakistan under American pressure.