KABUL, May 4: About 700 tribal elders, politicians and other influential people from Afghanistan and Pakistan will meet in the first week of August for a traditional “jirga” on the Taliban insurgency, the Afghan president said on Friday.

An Afghan delegation would travel to Pakistan later this month for more talks on the joint “peace jirga,” Hamid Karzai said in a statement after meeting Pakistan’s Interior Minister Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao.

“The people of Afghanistan want peace and stability in the area,” the president said, stressing the need for cooperation because “terrorism is affecting all of us.”

Mr Sherpao had said on Thursday, after a round of talks about the long-planned gathering, that the two sides were working on the agenda for the meeting, the first of its kind between the neighbours.

Meanwhile, a joint statement on the issue said that a total of 700 delegates, half each from Pakistan and Afghanistan, would participate in the jirga, adding that both sides have already identified potential participants.

The statement was issued simultaneously from Kabul and Islamabad after the two-day meeting between jirga commissions of the two countries. Mr Sherpao, who is also chairman of the Pakistan jirga commission, led the Pakistani delegation at the talks.

The two sides agreed that jirga was an “important mechanism” for promoting peace and stability both in Afghanistan and Pakistan, it said.

It was agreed that both sides would notify each other in case of an emergency that may require a delay in convening the joint peace jirga, the statement said.

The Kabul meeting discussed the overall objective, a tentative agenda for the jirga. It also set up a joint working group to further develop the agenda, mandate, rules of procedure and other important documents and to coordinate on all logistical and technical issues to facilitate smooth and effective convention of the jirga, the statement said.—Agencies