By DPA
Islamabad : An Afghan delegation arrived in Pakistan Thursday to prepare a scheduled meeting in August of a grand jirga, or council of elders. It is hoped this will help bring peace in Afghanistan by restricting cross-border infiltration by militants.
The sides will hold the third meeting Friday, of the Pakistani-Afghan joint jirga commission in the town of Nathia Gali north of Islamabad.
The chairman of the Afghan Jirga Commission, Pir Syed Gilani, will meet Pakistani Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao at the talks.
Each country will send around 350 people to the proposed grand jirga to be held in the Afghan capital Kabul in the first week of August.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai agreed on trying the jirga format at a meeting hosted by US President George W Bush in the White House in September 2006.
Co-opting local Pashtun tribes that straddle the mountain border region is seen as a viable means of curbing cross-border raids by Taliban and al-Qaeda militants sheltering in Pakistan's tribal areas.
The joint jirga commission had its first meeting in Islamabad in March and the second meeting in Kabul in early May.