Islamabad: Foreign Office (FO) on Thursday ruled out talks with the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
Responding to queries at a weekly news briefing, FO spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said Pakistan expected Afghan authorities to take urgent action against terrorist outfits and their leadership for the crimes they were committing and the terrorist incidents they were responsible for in Pakistan.
She further said that Pakistan remained committed to fighting against all terrorist outfits which had targeted Pakistan and the symbols of Pakistan-China friendship.
A day earlier, a senior Afghan Taliban leader urged the banned TTP and Islamabad to sit together and negotiate for peace.
Muhammad Nabi Omari, deputy interior minister of the interim Taliban government in Afghanistan, made the remarks at an Iftar gathering in the southeastern Khost town.
“We ask the government of Pakistan and advise the brothers (TTP) who are fighting with them to come together and talk,” he said. The deputy interior minister, however, did not address the presence of TTP in Afghanistan.
The Afghan Taliban have been privately urging Pakistan and the TTP to engage in direct negotiations to end over a two-decade-long conflict that has claimed thousands of lives and seen massive displacement of people in the tribal region straddling Afghanistan.
