2,500 dignitaries to attend consultative Loya Jirga

KABUL after most foreign combat troops exit by the end of next year.

The Joya Jirga preparatory commission, which met in Kabul on Tuesday, took various decisions about the event to be held over next four weeks, the commission spokesman Abdul Khaliq Hussaini told Pajhwok Afghan News.

He said between 250 and 300 women Council members, provincial public representatives, tribal elders and influential figures from across the country.

Cabinet ministers, government officials, representatives of Kuchi groups, people with disabilities, traders, industrialists, rights activists, former lawmakers and members of the preparatory commission would also attend the grand assembly.

Presidential candidates and representatives of Afghan refugees in Pakistan and Iran have also been invited to attend the jirga, Hussaini said.

Former president Sibghatullah Mujaddedi has been appointed as head of the preparatory commission to make arrangements for the Loya Jirga, which would decide on the deal-breaking issue of immunity for US troops who would stay on in Afghanistan beyond 2014.

US Secretary of State John Kerry, at the end of a visit to Kabul this month, told reporters there was just one issue outstanding – Washington’s demand that its troops be immune from Afghan law and tried in the United States instead.

ma