NEW DELHI--India's new government said Saturday it was ready extend "the hand of friendship" to arch-rival Pakistan as long as Islamabad moves to dismantle Islamic militant groups based on its soil.

S.M. Krishna, who was named foreign affairs minister earlier in the day, said the government's policy was to boost ties with neighbors, including Pakistan, blamed for involvement in a militant attack that killed 166 people in Mumbai last year.

"We would like to live in peace with our neighbor ... that has been our desire and we are pursuing that," Krishna, 77, told his first news conference in the job.

"We stand ready to extend our hand of friendship and partnership to Pakistan if they take determined and credible action to dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism operating from their territory," he said.

"We cannot change our neighbors," the politician added, announcing the policies of the Congress-led government, which scored a resounding victory in month-long general elections.

Pakistan and India began a peace process in 2004 but it came to a halt after New Delhi blamed last November's attacks in Mumbai on the Pakistan-based militant organization Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).

New Delhi also said it had "overwhelming evidence" that "official agencies" in Pakistan were involved in plotting and carrying out the attacks, an apparent reference to Pakistan's spy agency and army.

Indian prosecutors also claim they have evidence that "undoubtedly and conclusively" links the attacks to Pakistan, including mobile and satellite phone communications between the gunmen and their LeT "handlers."

Islamabad admitted in February for the first time that the Mumbai attacks were planned partly in Pakistan and filed a case against eight suspects, saying that six of them were already in custody.

New Delhi says the threat of extremism in Pakistan, whose military has launched an offensive against Taliban militants in the northwest of the country, is of concern to the region.

The two nuclear-armed South Asian neighbors have fought three wars since their 1947 independence from British rule.