Pakistani and Afghan officials and tribal leaders agreed on Tuesday to make contact with Taliban militants in an attempt to end the raging insurgent violence along their porous border.
"We agreed that contacts should be established with the opposition in both sides ... through jirgagai," former Afghan foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, who led his side in the talks, told a news conference.
Asked whether opposition groups included the Taliban, Owais Ahmed Ghani, governor of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province, said: "Yes, it includes all those who are involved in the conflict".
Violence has intensified in Afghanistan and Pakistan in recent months, raising fears for the prospects of both countries at the heart of the U.S.-led global campaign against militancy.
The violence has strained ties between the neighboring U.S. allies, with Afghanistan complaining Pakistan has not done enough to stop Taliban infiltrating from sanctuaries in its northwestern ethnic Pashtun lands.
Pashtun tribal elders and politicians from the two countries met at a so-called jirgagai, or mini-jirga, in Islamabad to follow up on a grand assembly in Kabul last year in which delegates called for talks with the Taliban.
This time, they said they would form teams to open contacts with the hard-line Islamist militants.
But the Taliban swiftly rejected the call for dialogue, with a spokesman saying it was "worthless".
"This jirga was founded by the Americans. It has no power, no respect," Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, said by satellite telephone from an undisclosed location.
"We will not hold any dialogue while foreign troops commanded by the Americans are in our country," he said.
A jirga, or traditional council, is a consultative system the proudly independent Pashtuns have used for more than 1,000 years to settle affairs of the nation or rally behind a cause.
Despite US and Afghan opposition to peace deals that Pakistan struck with militants in 2005 and 2006, the idea of engaging the Taliban in talks has gathered pace this year.
Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said a week ago that the kingdom has been sponsoring talks between the government of Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai and the Taliban militia.
