India needs good relations with neighbours: Chidambaram

India is in troubled geographical location, Union Home Minister P Chidambaram said today and stressed on the need for improving relations with neighbouring countries.

"We can choose our friends, but not our neighbours. We can make history but cannot unmake geography. Therefore we need to build on what we have," he said at Bharat Chamber of Commerce.

"We have to build on good relations that we are able to forge (with neighbours) and need to work hard to improve relations in conditions which are not as good as we want them to be," he said.

Referring to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's recent visit to Bangladesh, he said, it was a major effort to build relations with that country which was helped to find its feet in 1971.

It was in India's national interest that it helped Bangladesh become a strong and prosperous country. "We cannot build a Berlin Wall between India and Bangladesh. We must build relations and help them build capacity. The starting point to this exercises is to find solutions to some long-festering issues."

Maintaining that some problems like Tinbigha corridor should have been resolved long ago, he said "We had made up our mind that we will solve this problem. It was resolved in a few minutes. We said use the corridor 24 hours a day instead of 12 hours a day."