London, Jul 19 (IANS): Tributes were paid to the victims of the terror attacks in Mumbai at a meeting of the Indo-British Parliamentary Group and the Indo-European Business Forum at the House of Commons here.

The meeting on Tuesday evening, convened by the chairman of the group Virendra Sharma, MP from the Indian-dominated constituency of Ealing-Southall for an interaction with visiting Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president Nitin Gadkari and his delegation, observed a minute's silence in memory of those killed in the three blasts in different parts of Mumbai on July 13.

Gadkari said "we Mumbaikars have faced similar attacks in the past as well and we have time and again shown courage and determination to withstand such onslaughts".

He told the meeting that not only Mumbai, but the whole of India lived in a very uncertain neighbourhood. Pakistan has been using terror as a state policy and terror groups like Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed were offshoots of the state's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

He said the BJP favoured good relations with all its neighbours, including Pakistan, so that there could be peace in the region. But cross-border terrorism has disturbed peace in the region.

He appreciated Britain's repeated calls to Pakistan to stop exporting terror to India and other places but said the actions taken by Islamabad so far in dealing with terror emanating from its soil were just an eye-wash.

Gadkari called for joint Indo-British efforts in defeating global terrorism which he said was a challenge for humanity.

Answering another question, he said BJP was not against the minorities in India and was committed to solving their socio-economic problems, adding that his party would never adopt any anti-minority and anti-Muslim policy.

Gadkari said "Hindutva is not anti-Muslim, it is a way of life".