President General Pervez Musharraf and Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai will inaugurate the Pak-Afghan Jirga CommissionÂ’s meeting on August 8 in Kabul, Daily Times learnt here on Wednesday. Seven hundred members of the commission from both the countries will participate in this first ever meeting. The meeting will deliberate on the ways and means to end terrorism in Afghanistan and tribal areas of Pakistan.Sources said that the three-day meeting, which would continue till August 10, would also discuss border security and improvement in bilateral relations. Promotion of people-to-people contacts would also come under discussion. Sources said that after inauguration of the meeting the commission members would be divided into different committees, who would forward their recommendations to the main jirga where the decisions would be taken. The commission members would also constitute a permanent commission, which would monitor the status of the implementation of the decisions taken in the meeting, said the sources.
Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao will head the 350-member Pakistani delegation. Pir Syed Said Ahmad Gilani, Afghan jirga commissionÂ’s chairman, will lead the Afghan members.
Governor NWFP Lt-Gen (r) Ali Muhammad Jan Orakzai, Governor Balochistan Owais Ahmad Khan Ghani, federal ministers Dr Ghazi Ghulab Jamal and Yar Muhammad Rind, former bureaucrats Sahibzada Imtiaz, Khalid Aziz, 17 members of the Parliament from tribal areas, notables and clerics from NWFP and tribal areas will also be the part of the Pakistani delegation, said the sources.
According to the sources, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, leader of the opposition in the National Assembly, was also invited to participate in the jirga meeting being held in Kabul, but he declined the invitation due to his engagements here.