The Taliban government in Afghanistan on Sunday rejected United States President Donald Trump’s demand to retake control of the Bagram airbase, the Associated Press reported.

The US military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 had left the airbase, located 60 km north of Kabul, in Taliban’s control.

On Saturday, Trump had said that the US wanted to re-establish its control of Bagram. The US president had said that his administration was “talking now to Afghanistan” about the matter.

He had not provided details about the talks with the Taliban government.

“We want it back, and we want it back soon, right away,” Trump had told reporters. “If they don’t do it, you’re going to find out what I’m going to do.”

In a social media post, Trump said that “bad things are going to happen” if Afghanistan does not give the Bagram airbase back “to those that built it, the United States of America”.

On Sunday, the Taliban government said that it had consistently communicated to Washington that “independence and territorial integrity are of the utmost importance” to Afghanistan.

Deputy Spokesperson Hamdullah Fitrat urged the US to adopt a policy of “realism and rationality”.

The Taliban said that under the 2020 Doha Agreement, the US had promised that “it will not use or threaten force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Afghanistan, nor interfere in its internal affairs”.

Washington must “remain faithful” to the commitments, the Taliban said.

The 2020 deal, negotiated during Trump’s first term as the president, ended the 20-year US war in Afghanistan.

Fasihuddin Fitrat, a senior defence ministry official, was quoted by Al Jazeera as saying that a “deal over even an inch of Afghanistan’s soil is not possible” and that Kabul did not need it.

On Thursday, Trump had said that Bagram was “one of the biggest airbases in the world” and was given “to them [Taliban] for nothing”.

The Soviet-era airfield in Bagram has a 3.5-km runway capable of serving bomber and large cargo aircraft.

“We’re trying to get it back because they need things from us,” The Guardian quoted Trump as saying. “We want that base back. But one of the reasons we want the base is, as you know, it’s an hour away from where China makes its nuclear weapons.”

This was an apparent reference to Lop Nur, a Chinese testing range in the Xinjiang province.

Trump’s demand also came amid instability in West Asia and three months after the US, alongside Israel, conducted airstrikes on nuclear sites in neighbouring Iran to halt the country’s nuclear programme. Tehran has long maintained that its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes.

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