June 09, 2007	Saturday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 23, 1428

PESHAWAR, June 8: Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao on Friday said that the agenda for the Pakistan-Afghan jirga had been worked out and a committee had been formed to formulate rules for conducting the moot to be held in Kabul in the first week of August.

“This would be a fully representative jirga,” Mr Sherpao told journalists here at his residence.

The interior minister, who heads the Pakistani Jirga Commission, said that the 700-member jirga would include tribal elders, politicians, journalists and people from different walks of life.

He said the Taliban would not be involved in the first phase of the jirga but “all stakeholders” involved in the insurgency in Afghanistan could be engaged at a later stage.

The head of the Afghan Jirga Commission, Pir Sayed Ahmad Gillani has declared that the Taliban will not be invited to the jirga.

But critics warn that exclusion of the main insurgent group from the peace initiative could turn the whole process more into a seminar which will have little or no impact on the deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan.

Mr Sherpao explained that the grand moot might yield a smaller jirga that would then engage all sides in a serious dialogue to end violence and pave the way for peace in Afghanistan.

He said that President Pervez Musharraf and his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai would attend the jirga. The leaders of Pashtun nationalist parties, including the ANP and Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party, would also be invited, he added.

The main agenda of the joint jirga, the interior minister said, would be to debate the root causes of the insurgency and violence in Afghanistan and suggest ways and means to end it.