Three-day Afghan, Pakistan anti-terror meet opens

KABUL (AFP) - A three-day meeting of hundreds of Afghan and Pakistan tribal elders, clerics and other key figures, aimed at halting the escalating Al-Qaeda and Taliban threat, opened in Kabul Thursday.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and Afghan President Hamid Karzai sat on stage before about 700 delegates as a speech on the "peace jirga," followed by Islamic prayers, was delivered, an AFP reporter on the scene said.

The meeting is taking place amid strict security in a huge white tent that has been erected at a polytechnic institution in Kabul's west.

It is taking place without Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf, who abruptly pulled out on Wednesday citing an engagement in Islamabad.

Afghanistan's foreign ministry said earlier that Musharraf's no-show would not have a great impact on the outcome of the meeting, which has been billed as an opportunity for tribal leaders to thrash out a strategy to deal with the escalating terrorism threat.

The elders represent tribes whose territory straddles the remote and rugged border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan where the Taliban has been able to regroup since being outsed from power by a US-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001.

The region is also notorious for Al-Qaeda operatives, and Washington has accused the Pakistani authorities of allowing the tribal zones to become a safe haven from which terrorist attacks can be planned and committed.

Hundreds of police and soldiers patrolled the area where the jirga is being held, said the AFP reporter at the scene.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force had armoured vehicles stationed around the premises.

There were nearly 2,500 extra police and an unknown number of soldiers on duty specifically for the jirga, officials said, adding that cars moving around the city were being searched.