Amid demands for stringent laws against sexual offences in the wake of Delhi gangrape incident, a German diplomat today said "drastic" measures that go beyond democratic consensus were not the answer to tackle such problems successfully.

Addressing "Conference on Gender Based Sex Selection: Implementation challenges" organised by Centre for Social Research, Deputy Chief of Mission of the German Embassy Cord Meier-Klodt said "quick fix solutions" cannot deal with the issue.

"Now you might say I am overstepping my diplomatic neutrality a little bit, but I want to make my point because this is the way I see it...I do have my doubts with regard to quite a few of recent calls for drastic measures and I think you know what I am talking about, which go beyond the existing democratic consensus.

"Such activism may feel good. But it would be comparable of treating the symptoms of the disease instead of treating root cause of the disease and may be even making us forgetting about the root causes," he said.

Remarking that he cannot avoid mentioning the December 16 "horrific" gangrape of the girl in a moving bus on such an occasion, he said there is a need to tackle this issue finally with determination and to find some lasting solutions for making Delhi and India as a whole a safer place for women.

"Yet at the same time what is at stake is another very important challenge. That is not an easy task in light of the horrors we have had to hear and read about every day. But we must not be carried away by emotions," he said in an apparent reference to vociferous demands for death penalty or chemical castration for rapists.

Meier-Klodt said the issue is about strengthening the vital pillars of democratic society but not about replacing them by "some alleged quick fix solutions".

"What is needed is comprehensive look at the role of women and not a not a quick fix. We have to take a holistic view which starts from the fight for right of women from the day beginning and in this case from the day beginning is even before they are born," he said.

He said that there was a need for public awareness to grow and that effective implementation of the existing laws can and must be enhanced and the legal system may have to be checked whether it still fully corresponds with the new challenges of the changing society.

"What is needed is comprehensive look at the role of women and not a quick fix," he said.

On the issue of sex selection and illegal abortion, he said fighting gender based selection is not the question of creating new laws.

"The laws are already here. So what is required here is effective implementation of existing laws. And of course change of the mindset in the society to prevent people from resorting to such practices. Both of these approaches are not quick fix. It involves lot of work by large number of people", he added.