The Pakistan Foreign Ministry on Thursday dismissed speculations about holding talks with the proscribed TTP amid senior Pakistani politician and Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam Fazl (JUI-F) chief Maulana Fazlur Rahman's visit to Afghanistan.
Rahman was a key player in Pakistan's previous Pakistan Democratic Movement government headed by Shehbaz Sharif, where he served as the coalition's president.
Notably, Rahman met the Taliban's** supreme leader Haibatullah Akhundzada in Kandahar on Wednesday. Following his meeting with Akhundzada, Rahman pledged to revive talks between Pakistan and the TTP.
However, the Pakistan Foreign Ministry rebuffed his initiatives and instead urged the authorities in Kabul to destroy TTP's sanctuaries in Afghanistan.
"The outlawed TTP carried out several terrorist attacks inside Pakistan. We demand that the Afghan interim government take action against the terrorists," Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mumtaz Zahra Baloch told reporters in Islamabad.
Last year, the TTP's name cropped up in many investigations conducted by Pakistan's law enforcement agencies that found the Islamic militant group's hand in a string of terrorist attacks, including a suicide bombing of a mosque that killed over 100 in Peshawar city.
*A terrorist organization banned in Russia and India.
**The Taliban is under UN sanctions for extremism.