A high-level Pakistani delegation including several federal ministers Wednesday morning left here for Kabul to attend the Pakistani-Afghan grand joint jirga, or council meeting of tribal elders, scheduled for Aug. 9-11.
Delegations from Pakistan and Afghanistan will meet to address two issues, namely improving bilateral relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan and a clear policy to "deny sanctuaries, training and financing to terrorist elements" on each other's soil, the Pakistani newspaper Daily Times reported Wednesday.
At least 169 tribal elders from northwest Pakistan will leave Peshawar for Kabul on Wednesday to attend the Jirga, according to the DAWN newspaper report on Wednesday.
Local reports suggest that Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf and his Afghan counterpart President Hamid Karzai, will jointly inaugurate the jirga.
Talking to media before leaving for Kabul, Pakistani Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao expressed Tuesday the hope that joint Pakistan-Afghan jirga would help yield better results for peace in the region.
Sherpao said that emphasis would be made on peace by seeking the ways and means to eliminate extremism and terrorism from the region, adding that the jirga would prove to be a milestone to check the tendencies of extremism and terrorism in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.
However, an analysis article of Wednesday's DAWN newspaper doubted that the jirga would produce desired results, mainly due to lack of mandate to include Afghan Taliban in the talks and lack of authority to take decisions acceptable to all sides.
On its editorial page, DAWN also said the jirga could well prove to be an exercise in futility as many tribal elders who were expected to attend the grand assembly have refused to do so.
Earlier, some tribal elders belonging to Pakistan Waziristan tribal region, where has long been considered a restive place with active militancy, have boycotted the jirga meeting.
Discussions on holding grand Jirga are a follow-up to an agreement reached between Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai during a meeting at the White House hosted by U.S. President Bush in September 2006.
Authorities in the two countries had agreed to hold joint Jirga to eliminate insurgency in their tribal areas along the border and curtail illegal cross-border movements.
Since joining the Washington-led war on terror in 2001, Pakistan has sent some 80,000 troops to hunt al-Qaeda militants and Taliban fighters who sneaked into its tribal region to seek refuge following the fall of Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
But Afghanistan continued to accuse Pakistan of harboring Taliban and al-Qaeda members and lending a blind eye to illegal movement of militants, the claims Pakistan denied.
Pakistan said it has done the best to stop fighters' cross- border movement and called for increased efforts of concerned parts in stopping violence along the 2500-km-long Pakistani-Afghan border.
Pakistani officials have said militancy and terrorism problems could not be resolved through only military activities, suggesting that a holistic strategy comprising political dialogue, economic and social improvement initiatives should be considered.
Source: Xinhua
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