Geo News

Pak-Afghan mini Jirga agrees to form contact group
Updated at: 2023 PST, Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Pak-Afghan mini Jirga agrees to form contact group ISLAMABAD: Pakistani and Afghan officials and tribal leaders agreed Tuesday to make contact with Taliban militants in an attempt to end the raging insurgent violence along their porous border.

The declaration came after two days of talks in Islamabad aimed at finding a lasting solution to the unrest which has wracked the region since the US-led toppling of Afghanistan's Taliban regime in 2001.

"We agreed that contacts should be established with the opposition in both countries, joint contacts through the Jirgagai (mini-tribal council)," said former Afghan foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, the leader of the Afghan side.

Asked whether that included the Taliban and other militants, Owais Ahmed Ghani, Governor NWFP and leader of the Pakistani delegation, said, "Yes, it includes all those who are involved in this conflict situation."

The meeting of 50 officials and tribal elders from both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border was a follow-up to a larger "peace Jirga" held in Kabul in August 2007.

Abdullah said that the mini-Jirga had advised both governments "to deny sanctuary for the terrorists and militant elements which are a threat to all of us for both countries."

"At the same time one new recommendation of the peace Jirga was to expedite the process of peace and reconciliation," he said.

The joint declaration said there was an "urgent and imperative need of dialogue and negotiations with the opposition groups in both countries with a view to finding a peaceful settlement of the ongoing conflict, upholding the supremacy of the constitutions of both countries."

The next meeting would be in Kabul in two or three months, the officials