KABUL, May 3: Afghanistan and Pakistan have finalised lists of about 350 people each to attend a joint jirga to tackle the Taliban insurgency, Pakistan’s interior minister said on Thursday.
The two sides are now working on the details of the agenda for the meeting, the first of its kind, Interior Minister Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao told reporters in Kabul.
The jirga, to which the Afghan and Pakistan leaders agreed at talks with US
President George W. Bush in September, was first scheduled for early in the year. Mr
Sherpao said no date had been fixed.
Those on the invitation lists include tribal elders, parliamentarians and intellectuals, said the minister, who survived a suicide bombing on April 28 that killed at least 30 people.
The jirga, a tradition in Afghanistan, is intended to involve local people more closely in efforts to end the Taliban insurgency, which has grown steadily since the militant movement was driven from government in late 2001.
Relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan are chilly, with each accusing the other of not doing enough to curb the violence growing on both sides of the border.
Mr Sherpao is due to meet President Hamid Karzai on Friday, the final day of his visit here.
Mr Sherpao also said that the capture of a senior Al Qaeda operative announced last week was carried out at the border of Iraq.
US officials said Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi, one of Al Qaeda’s most experienced members, was caught last autumn, secretly held for months by the CIA, and then incarcerated at the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
He was detained while trying to return to his native Iraq, but US officials didn’t say exactly where. However, Mr Sherpao said Al Iraqi “was arrested at the border of Iraq.”
Mr Sherpao made the remark in response to a question at the news conference. He did not say how he obtained the information, when exactly the arrest took place, or where on the Iraqi border Al Iraqi was captured. Who detained Al Iraqi also remains a mystery.—Agencies
