Islamabad: A meeting between Pakistani government and Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) negotiators was cancelled on Monday after a Taliban faction claimed to have killed 23 kidnapped soldiers, marking a serious setback to the nascent peace process.

Announcing the decision, the coordinator of the government negotiating team Irafan Seddiqi, who is an adviser to the prime minister, said a meeting in this situation would be futile.

“We regret to say that things are not moving in a right direction,” Seddiqi said in a statement.

The four-member government dialogue committee will meet on Tuesday to chart a course of action, Seddiqi said.

Late on Sunday night, a militant group identifying itself as the Mohmand Agency Taliban, claimed to have killed 23 paramilitary Frontier Corpos (FC) soldiers kidnapped in 2010. The disappearance of dozens of Pakistani soldiers was reported from the Mohmand tribal district on June 17, 2010.

Dozens of paramilitary soldiers from the Frontier Corps (FC) vanished after the Taliban attacked their checkpost in a remote area of Mohmand near the Afghan border.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif condemned the killing of the soldiers as a “gruesome act.” In a statement‚ Sharif said incidents like that of martyrdom of FC personnel cast negative impact on peace talks, adding that Pakistan cannot afford bloodshed any more.

Paying tribute to the soldiers, Sharif said the government had initiated the dialogue process with good intentions in the light of the decisions taken by a conference of all political parties.

“However‚ the process is sabotaged whenever we reach an encouraging point,” the prime minister said. “It is a highly regrettable situation and the entire nation is grieved over it.”

On January 29, Sharif had announced talks with the Pakistani Taliban — which has been waging an insurgency since 2007 — and set up a four-member committee for the purpose, saying he wanted to “give peace another chance.”

The Taliban’s demands include the nationwide imposition of Sharia, an end to US drone strikes and the withdrawal of the army from northwestern tribal regions — conditions the government and army are unlikely to be able to meet.

Pakistani troops have for years been battling home-grown insurgents in the tribal belt, which Washington considers the main hub of Taliban and Al Qaida militants plotting attacks on the West and in Afghanistan.

Despite the peace talks, deadly attacks by militants continued, increasing pressure on the government to abandon its most favoured option of dialogue and order military operations against militant sanctuaries in the north-western tribal region.

Amid the developments, army formations on Monday conducted field firing and battle exercises as practice for troops in operating under real battlefield environment with live firing of various weapon systems, the Inter-Services Public Relations said.

Troops of Gujranwala and Sialkot formations carried out the exercise at Tilla Ranges near Jhelum in Punjab province and elements from armour, infantry, artillery, aviation as well as Pakistan Air Force participated in it.

— with inputs from AFP