Pakistan condemns Rajnath Singh's warning and says Afghan talks cannot be unconditional

Pakistan has rejected Defence Minister Rajnath Singh’s warning that India would strike harder if there were another terrorist attack, and in the same briefing set out tough terms for any talks with the Taliban government in Afghanistan.

“We reject and condemn the Indian Defence Minister’s provocative remarks,” foreign office spokesperson Sajjad Haider Khan said at his weekly briefing in Islamabad on Friday. He said India should “draw an appropriate lesson from the last year’s experience” and abandon what he called its belligerent posture.

Singh had spoken a day earlier at the National Defence Conclave 2026 in Delhi. Recalling Operation Sindoor, India’s strikes on Pakistan last year, he said a bigger response would follow if terrorists struck again. New Delhi has not responded to Islamabad’s statement.

Terms for Kabul

On Afghanistan, Khan said Pakistan was open to dialogue and welcomed sincere efforts by friendly countries, but “the talks will not be unconditional”. Islamabad, he said, had “only one demand”, a verifiable mechanism to ensure that attacks on Pakistan from Afghan soil stop completely.

Pakistan blames the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and other groups it says operate from across the border. The Taliban have avoided taking a clear position on them.

No Russian channel

Earlier this month, Moscow’s special envoy for Afghanistan, Zamir Kabulov, suggested Russia could help settle the dispute if both sides asked. Khan played that down. “At present, I am not aware of any separate, formal Russian mediation initiative being under discussion,” he said.

The Moscow Format meeting on Afghanistan on 5 October ended without a joint statement after the Pakistani and Afghan delegations clashed over language on terrorist networks in Afghanistan. Khan said Kabul had refused wording it had accepted a year earlier. The missing communiqué, he said, spoke for itself and showed the Taliban’s reluctance to commit on the militants.

Several countries have tried over the past year to bring the two neighbours together. Qatar and Turkiye brokered a ceasefire in October 2025, Saudi Arabia hosted talks, and China held a round in Urumqi in April. None has settled the core dispute over the militant groups.

Why it matters

The two statements leave Islamabad sounding hard-line on both its borders at once. At home, the federal government imposed an emergency and governor’s rule in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the province that borders Afghanistan, on 11 October, and the Peshawar High Court is due to hear challenges to it on 20 October.