Peace Jirga to Start in Afghan Capital
VOA News 01 June 2010
Afghan President Hamid Karzai is preparing to host a three-day conference in Kabul in hopes of crafting a national consensus on ending the nearly nine-year war.
The "jirga," or assembly, will convene Wednesday with about 1,600 delegates gathered under a large, air-conditioned tent. The delegates will come from every section of Afghan society, including tribal, provincial and religious leaders.
Some of the delegates may be sympathizers with the Taliban, although members of the hardline Islamist group were not invited.
The Taliban was ousted from power in 2001 by a U.S.-led invasion shortly after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.
The Islamist group says it will not engage in peace talks until foreign troops withdraw from Afghanistan. The Taliban said Tuesday that all the jirga delegates are affiliated with foreign forces and the Afghan government, which it called a "powerless stooge."
Hezb-i-Islami, a smaller militant group in Afghanistan, says the conference is useless because only people handpicked by the government are attending.
President Karzai's main political opponent in last year's election, Abdullah Abdullah, says he is not attending the jirga because its agenda does not address the concerns of ordinary Afghans.
Thousands of security forces will be deployed around Kabul during the meeting.
The U.S. Embassy in Kabul issued a statement Tuesday offering support for the meeting. President Barack Obama has deployed an additional 30,000 troops in Afghanistan to defeat a growing Taliban insurgency, but is vowing to begin withdrawing them beginning in mid-July 2011.
Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.
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