KABUL, Aug 9: Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz told a three-day joint Pakistan-Afghan Peace Jirga on Thursday that both nations could defeat a resurgent Al Qaeda and Taliban if they worked together.

The jirga has been billed as an opportunity for the tribal leaders and elders of Afghanistan and Pakistan to thrash out a strategy to deal with the escalating terrorism threat.

“The two nations shared a common destiny. I believe... if Afghanistan and Pakistan worked together, we will eliminate in one day oppression against both nations,” Mr Karzai said while opening the jirga.

Mr Karzai was joined in his call for unity by Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz who said the future of Pakistan and Afghanistan were intertwined, and instability in one country affected the other.

Mr Aziz, however, said that Afghanistan needed to address its own insurgency problems and not blame its neighbour.

"Afghanistan is not yet at peace within itself. The objective of national reconciliation remains elusive,'' Mr Aziz said.

"They can't blame anyone else for failing to achieve this objective that lay at the heart of their malaise,'' the prime minister said.

Mr Karzai told the jirga of the daily woes and suffering that the Afghan people endure as the Taliban take on government and foreign troops.

"Afghan people are dying daily, our schools are burning, our mullahs are being killed,'' President Karzai said in a 40-minute speech occasionally punctuated by applause.

"Our boys and girls have been targeted ... at school.''

He said militants were abducting and killing women in the name of the Taliban and Islam, while barring the girls from school, a trend that is ''slowly going to the other side'' of the border into Pakistan.

“If the problem is from the Afghanistan side, we should seek ways to solve it. If the problem is in Pakistan, we should find solutions for it,” he said.

The Afghan leader said he had often asked Pakistan: “Why from your soil and administration is this evil coming to us. Why is it bothering us?” “Who are they who bother Pakistan and Afghanistan?” he asked. “Who is training them? By whose money are they being trained?”

Mr Karzai said he did not consider the Taliban-linked violence in Afghanistan to be the work of Afghans, but enemies of the country and Islam.

Mr Aziz said it should not be forgotten that “first and foremost the Taliban are Afghans.” And Afghanistan cannot blame others for the lack of reconciliation among its people.

He strongly condemned Al Qaeda which, he said, had to be dealt with firmly and mainly through military means.

“Terrorism, militancy, the violent creed preached by Al Qaeda, extremism and Talibanisation represent pain, intolerance and backwardness in our societies and a phenomenon that has maligned our great and noble faith, Islam.”

They are not the future of Pakistan or Afghanistan. We must fight these dark forces with determination and resolve,” he said.

Nearly 100 Pakistani delegates from tribal areas where Al Qaeda and Taliban extremists are said to be most active have boycotted the meeting, mainly in protest against the Pakistani military presence in their areas.

But one of the Pakistani delegates who did attend, Malik Zarin Khan from Mohmand Agency, said he hoped the meeting would go some way towards halting the spread of Taliban-linked violence.

“This fire, either months later or a year later, will reach us too,” he said.

“We hope this jirga will help resolve the problem.” The jirga is being held in a huge tent in the ground of a college on the outskirts of the Afghan capital.—Agencies